Noir Souls
by Ridley the Violator
Summary: Ten years after the death of the Chosen Undead, Solaire of Astora is an embittered Darkmoon Blade solving murders in a Lordran that is dying faster every day. Now a deadly new case threatens to break his last scraps of sanity, as well as the fragile truce between Covenants. It's going to be a long night. (Now completed. Feedback is appreciated!)
1. 1 of 7: Burns

_This story takes place in an alternate and "what-if" continuity of what can loosely be called Dark Souls canon. It is a same-but-different take on the Dark Souls setting, themes, and characters. I wrote this as a sendoff to my favorite game in anticipation of its sequel. _

**NOIR SOULS**

Lordran's not the place it used to be.

The place was alive when I came here ten years ago. You couldn't take a step without seeing the latest undead hopefuls battling it out, tearing through the great sewers below the Burg, setting fires in the catacombs, facing down the rotting remnants of the dragon wars with fire, faith, and steel. There was this prophecy, see, that one of us was destined to end the curse of the undead. Who knows how—Gwyn's children certainly weren't eager to share with us humans. Truth be told, I never paid much heed. I came to Lordran for something else.

Abyss take me, I found it.

I'm down at Firelink Shrine filling my estus flasks for the third time that week when I get the news. My copy of the Book of the Guilty opens to a couple of no-name bastards—no notes on location, nothing. Gwyndolin's keeping this one hush-hush. It's my job, it's been my job for the last few years, to pen the perp in so the rest of the Darkmoon Blades can track them down. And if it comes to that, the bloody work will be done in some secluded tunnel, some back alley, as far away from any Covenant territory as it needs to be—none of the Covenants have the souls to risk open warfare anymore, not even those of the Gods. Not like they used to.

Those days are over. Today, I need info. I need to know the mood in the burg, which way the souls are flowing. Lautrec always knows, pulling the strings of his web of informants from behind a summon sign in Anor Londo. Last time I saw Lautrec I swore I would kill him. More than a few of the Darkmoon Blades still don't trust me, thinking I haven't cut ties with him after the prophecy ended. So the yellow knight is no option. But I know another spider, one who's bound to spin me a thread if I step on him hard enough.

You won't find many adventurers scavenging in the catacombs anymore—you won't find much of anything since me and Oscar took care of the necromancers. I think Patches just decided he liked it there. He's carved himself a little alcove and found a bonfire in a dark, bricked up cell, a little reprieve from whatever the hell it is he does now. I can smell dried sweat and old leather when I step into his little chamber. He's crouched on the other side of the flames when I see him, his ratty eyes gleaming.

"Fancy seeing you again." That signature snivel. "What can old Patches do for you this time, eh?"

A push a wad of green blossom to the side of my mouth. Can't make it through the day without some. "I just got wind of some murders, Patches. I'm guessing you might have a line on this."

"Of course I do! Deaths like these ain't standard anymore—there's a peace on, don't you know? Call it a premium."He gropes at the air with his hand.

I skirt the heat of the fire and get in his face. "We'll call it a freebie, if you don't want me putting you in as a suspect; I know all about your little backroom deals with Shiva and the Yellow Knight. It'd be a sun blessed miracle if one of you _didn't_ have a share of loot from this one already."

Patches only has about half his teeth left, but he's not shy about showing them off. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Times are tough—it's no Knight who abandons his best friends, eh? Like me, old trusty Patches, poor and cold out here, stuck in the dark. I haven't seen a sprite of humanity in years."

"That's funny, Patches. That's real funny." I touch my sword belt. "I've got something for you, sure. As long as you're willing to give up an ear."

"All right then, be that way." He tries to brush it off, but I can see the rage in the man's eyes. "I doubt you've got much humanity left on you, anyways."

"Keep it up, Patches."

"Aye, well, the vics, there were a half dozen or so of them. Tenderfoots, aye? Came to town a little late to the party, if you know what I mean. Joined up right quick with sugar tits in Anor Londo—can't say I blame 'em—and they thought they'd go legend hunting. Or at least that's what I heard on the grapevine."

"And the sinners?"

"Ain't we all? Just a joke, eh. No one saw who hollowed the sods—real good work, too, I hear. Hey, maybe you should go ask? I'm sure they'll be _real _accommodating."

"I'll take that under consideration."

Patches snorts and the spits into the fire, the flames crackling indignantly back up at his face. "You do that. Me, I've got scrounging to do. Not all of us get to chop off rotten ears for a living."

I let him think I'm about to go. I catch his eyes following me, his shoulders relaxing, his breath letting out. Then I turn back. "You're not holding out on me. You wouldn't do that to an old friend."

"'course not." His eyes dart around the cave for a moment. He shifts onto his heels.

"Stay down." I let my hands hang loose by my sides. "We're not done here."

Patches' lip curls as he slowly lowers himself back down to the fire, glaring up at me like a stubborn child. "I've said all I'm going to say. Don't push it, Solaire. You know who I work for."

"I could care less what Lautrec does to you."

"Oh, yeah?" He seems genuinely amused, now. It gives me an uneasy feeling. "You think he doesn't know that you come down here to squeeze me? I bet the other Darkmoons'd be right pissed if they knew about our little deals. Such as they are."

"I'm not afraid of him."

Patches's eyes narrow. "The Yellow Knight ain't the only thing you _should_ be afraid of. Take some advice, Solaire: this is a big one. Don't go kindling the fire."

The tendons in my sword hand creak. "You know something."

"Not me. But he said to pass a warning on to you, for old time's sake. Unless you're still itching to go the way of the Chosen Undead…"

Oscar.

"You'll keep your mouth shut about him, if you know what's good for you."

He takes my advice.

Patches doesn't shut up easy. I figure I should be proud of myself, if walking away didn't feel so much like running away.

I close the catacomb's gate behind me, but I can't reseal the can of worms that lying bastard opened in my mind. Could the murders be Lautrec's work? Why else would they be trying to spook me? Gods know that Patches has never had the souls to spout blight like that at me before.

As I climb the cold stairs back to Firelink, a woman steps out from the darkness. With that brass armor she's the color of a low moon and about as pretty too. I bow to the Lady of the Darkling.

"Morning."

"What are you doing down here?" she asks, circling to my front with a precise steps. "Did you read the Book of the Guilty this morning?"

"I'm hunting. And I did."

"Funny you should say that—there's a chance that this was a Forest Hunter attack." She's getting closer. Her helmet tilts as she watches me, exposing the inscribed metal bevor that covers her throat. "Have you seen the bodies?"

"No." I raise my helmet and spit green blossom tinged saliva out of the corner of my mouth.

"Ah. That's a disgusting habit. And you were always so…clean." I feel her pluck at my shoulder before I put the helmet down. Her hand trails off my shoulder with her words and touches the pommel of the sunlight straight sword. "Still using this old thing, too. You're not a Sunlight Warrior anymore."

"I already rubbed out all my heraldry and begged Gwyndolin for one of these." I thumb at the Darkmoon talisman at my belt. "Isn't that enough? You want me to start slinging moonlight and fighting with a rapier now?"

"I imagine the former would make the others more comfortable, if you at least tried."

"What do they care?"

She laughs, like tingling bells. Not bad. "How could they not care, with your famous sunny charm?"

I slam my helmet back down. "You didn't come here for this."

"Solaire…"

I step away from her. "You know where those Princess Guards got hit?"

Her voice hardens. "Yes."

"Well?"

"It was close to the Parish," she says. "Right underneath the chapel. Right over the border."

The gears stall in my head. "Oh, Abyss."

"Indeed. We think it may be a declaration of some kind."

"Maybe," I say. "But I'll need to see it. That's my job, right?"

"Of course." Her voice is oddly strained. That elegant finned helmet turns away from me as she reaches for her belt, probably for a homeward bone. I cross my arms and shiver against the icy breath of the catacombs and the gray light that spills down from above.

It's cold down here.

"Here. These are from the Parish bonfire." Her hand comes up holding two homeward bones. She hands one to me, holding the other in front of my eyes. It looks like a broken finger bone, and she traces its jagged edge down the oval face-plate of her helmet. "Make a wish."

"I used to wish for things all the time."

I crush the bone in my fingers. All I can think of is cold pincers worming their way into my scalp and the pain of insanity as the sun burns my mind away.

Fire erupts before my eyes, casting warmth across filmy brick and mortal walls and a rickety set of stairs. I can just hear the whispering of branches on the stone outside: the black trees of the Darkroot Garden. People used to come to the Parish to pray. Now it's a shadow of what it was, and the only ones dumb enough to stick around are hollows. And Andre.

"Strangest thing." The chink of his hammer bounces around inside my skull. More green blossom will take the edge off. "I was off collecting metals from the chapel, you know, and when I came down—well, there he was." He doesn't even stop to point.

I look over at the dead hollow slumped up against the wall. Rusted chainmail hangs off its desiccated muscle in a soupy orange mess, caked with dark red blood that's spilt from a dozen wounds. This one's past hollow.

The Lady of the Darkling is talking to Andre. "I'm surprised you can hear yourself think over this racket."

"Sometimes I can't, ma'am."

I put my hand on my sword and inch closer to the body. I doubt this one will be getting up anytime soon, and if his condition is the standard then neither will his friends.

"Could ye get that thing outta here, Knight Solaire? 'S distracting me from my work."

"Later." I kneel by the body. The smell is horrendous, but green blossom saw to blunting that a long time ago. It's just as well. The only thing that Lordran smells like now is death.

"Looks like he got taken by surprise," says the Lady, sliding up next to me as I peer at the wounds. "The Forest Hunters are fond of those fog rings. That would explain what Andre said."

"Yeah. Where are the others?"

"Five more down the stairs," she says absently. "They're in much the same condition."

I point to a few of the wounds. "Hold on. Do those look like burns to you?"

She leans closer, her hands on my shoulders. "Charcoal resin, maybe? Or fire weapons. The scavengers will use any ember they can get their hands on."

I shake my head. "Look at that peeling." It's true; the edges of the wounds are marked with a dark, bruise like discoloration. When I look closer I can see tiny ridges of wrinkled flesh with angry red peering out from the folds. It seems familiar. I make a mental note of it and stand up. "Do the others have burns like these?"

"I don't know." She keeps up behind me as I make my way down the stairs. The sound of Andre's hammering takes on a tinny quality. "What are you hoping to find?"

"Not sure. But I'm thinking if we can find whatever the sinner's weapons were augmented with, we can find—"

I stop dead in my tracks at the foot of the stairs. Bodies, and pieces of bodies. One lies twisted and broken as if crushed by a great hammer, an enormous charcoal eye on its back. I take a deep breath and side step him for now. As I go from body to body I spot similar looking marks. They're all puncture wounds, all burned. Looking too close makes my head fill heavy.

Whatever did this was packing some serious heat.

I motion to the Lady of the Darkling. "Any weapons in the area that could have done this?"

She's standing at the bottom of the stairs. "No. I've already combed over this whole room a dozen times, Solaire. We've got bodies and nothing else."

"How about those burns? Any marks, residues, anything?"

"Nothing."

"Come on, Darkling. You're not giving me much to work with. How are we supposed to hunt the guilty with nothing to go on?" It comes out harder than I wanted it to.

She sighs, her breath shaky. "Do you expect Lord Gwyndolin to march down here just for you? You're lucky he even swore you in—you know how the children of Gwyn feel about people who break from their Covenants. Especially one you started yourself, I mean—"

"That was a long time ago, Darkling. Haven't I earned a little complaining?"

"Right. This whole mess has me on edge, that's all." She throws her head back, the knife-edge headpiece on the back of her helmet catching the light from the torches. Beyond her, just down the stairs, a crumbling doorway yawns wide open to the rich shadows of the Darkroot Forest. The killers could be out there right now, for all we know.

"It makes me nervous, too. Something like this hasn't happened in a long time." I find a straight of green blossom in my belt and light it up off one of the torches on the wall. I inhale and close my eyes, letting it energize my mind. Charcoal resin would probably have left some sort of residue, and your standard fire blades would have cauterized the wounds. There's too much blood.

"Now you're smoking that poison too?"

My throat seizes in a coughing fit. My lungs feel like they're going to turn inside out. The Lady of the Darkling slides over, one hand resting on her parrying dagger like she thinks she can cut the smoke out of me. "Are you okay?"

"Pyromancy." I blow out the rest of the smoke and take the straight out of my mouth, putting it behind my back.

"Hmm." She seems to think for a moment. "Normal Pyromancy is messy, loud, and you can't put it on blades. At least I've never heard of that."

"Right." I frown, lapsing back into thought. "Yeah. Did anyone actually witness these attacks?"

"Not unless Andre is lying." She snorts. "Most like these were ember-forged weapons, Solaire. Forest Hunters are scavengers, they'll use whatever gear they can loot off their victims. For all we know the murder weapons were the same ones that the victims were carrying."

"What, they disarmed them and killed them with their own weapons? Just to piss me off? That's helpful." I grit my teeth. "Anyone can use forged weapons. Random embers of any damned element get us nowhere."

"Except to the very doorstep of the Forest Hunters." She spreads her arms to the Parish and the shadowy green just outside the door. "It fits."

I shake my head. "It doesn't fit. Look at the facts: they almost always hunt in packs and they always have piecemeal armaments, but it looks like these men were killed by the same weapon—and the same sort of element. And then take the fact that they've never killed this far in before—why start now, and why not push in farther? They're bushwhackers, not soldiers. They don't just declare war and leave."

"Maybe it was just a few of them," says the Darkling. "Like Shiva and his 'friend.' That would explain how Andre never heard anything, and the exotica." She gestures at the nearest lump of burns and wounds.

"So, what, Shiva decides to declare war on Anor Londo all by himself? No way. The Darkroot isn't where we need to go for this."

She crosses her arms. If I didn't know better I'd think she was pouting. "And where do you think we're supposed to go?"

"Blighttown." I stare at the torch set into the wall, its flickering reds and yellows. "Maybe this just wasn't _normal_ Pyromancy. Maybe these weren't Forest Hunters at all."

"Chaos Pyromancy? You think Chaos Servants did this?"

I take another drag on the blossom. "Random killings, strange burns, hit and fades? We're not that far from the aqueduct and the sewers—who would notice a bunch of raggedy undead passing through Firelink Shrine? It's worth a shot."

"You're going to go ask? You know, the Chaos Servants aren't renowned for their hospitality."

"No. But we can lean on Laurentius, as long as the others don't find us first." I smile. "Besides, he and his friends called my help in more than once, back in the day. Maybe they'll even throw me a party."

The Darkling plucks the straight out of my fingers and flicks it against the wall. "And I suppose you're proud of that, are you?"

I flinch. I can remember facing down more than a few Darkmoon Blades in the sewers on behalf of whatever ratty Chaos Servant managed to call in the Warriors. I salvage my dignity and sketch her a bow. "Those were different times, lady.

"I know that," she says. "I was just wondering if _you_ did."

So it's down to Firelink again. As we step into the Parish elevator the Bell of Awakening rings in my ears. The Lady of the Darkling is standing in my shadow, and I can hear her tinny breathing . Above us is the roof I braved with Oscar to face down monsters made of bronze. I remember the feeling of sunlight in my hand and the way the kid cheered when I threw it, the way he grinned when he pulled the lever at the top of the tower.

Ding fucking dong.

Petrus is waiting at the bottom. Time was you could see schmucks like him passing through Lordran all the time, looking for bonfires to kindle for us poor Undead souls. That, or looking to do a little hunting of their own.

"My lady! It is an honor to have you in our presence." His voice is as rounded and soft as his body. Of course, a cleric's armor would make anyone look past his prime—but Petrus's glistening jowls don't lie.

"Petrus." The Lady lets him kiss her red-gold hand. "Where are your friends?"

"Still preparing for another expedition into the Tomb, my Lady of the Darkling." He bows to me as well. "And sir."

Strange. I hadn't realized that the Darkmoons and the Way of the White were on speaking terms. Why not, I suppose—they all worship the same Gods, in the end. They just don't like to talk about it. So I just give him a nod.

The Lady is talking. "You should be prepared, Petrus. Much has happened in the last few days. We may need the aid of the Princess, if she will give it. Pass that on to any holy men and women you might meet."

The old cleric's eyes go as wide as they can. It's an unusual request; I'm as surprised as he is. "I shall do so, and I shall pray to the Princess of the Sun and ask her to intercede on her brother's behalf." He turns to me, simpering all the while. "I would be honored to follow the one who once guarded the Chosen Undead."

My fists clench. "Thanks."

The Lady touches my wrist. "This world may yet be made right again, sirs. Vereor nox." She leads me away. Petrus's sweaty mask of a smile follows us down the stairs. I've never liked the man—too quick with that smile. Never trust a smiler—they'll stab you in the back once they've smiled their way to what they want.

"What's gotten in to you?" hisses the Darkling as we walk.

"Nothing. Man doesn't know what he's talking about, that's all." I lift my helmet to pop another wad of green blossom in.

"I doubt he meant it as an insult; it was the Chosen Undead who failed, not you."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't I? I brought you two before Gwynevere; I saw the courage that made him the Chosen, yes, but he was also a reckless man. I don't think he would have made it as far as he did without you."

"He was a Gods damned hero."

We keep quiet all the way past the dead bonfire and the flooded chapel. No one knows who killed the first, silent Fire Keeper, the lonely girl in the grey robes who Rhea of Thoroulund replaced—I've got my suspicions, but not enough solid evidence to pin the bastard down. I confronted him once, and the Knight of Carim laughed in my face. Sometimes I wish I'd broken the son of a bitch in half right there. Then I remember the place of filth and horror where he drew steel with me and Oscar and faced down a dragon made of hunger.

"Solaire?"

The Lady of the Darkling stands just where the bastard sat by the side of the ruined wall, watching the old Fire Keeper with those hungry pin-holes in his helmet. For a moment her amber armor looks like his. The past can do funny things to your vision; light up things for you that aren't really there, make you blind to things that were there all along. I blink it away. "Let's go."

She stays there, but her voice seems to come from far away. "I can't follow you to Blighttown. You know how the Chaos Servants are; if they see Gwyndolin's first Knight in their territory it could mean war. And if you turn out to be wrong, and we end up with enemies on all sides…"

"Am I going to have to walk in their alone?"

She clasps her hands in front of her. "The Blades are just one Covenant. We can't throw our weight around without support, and you know it."

I thumb myself. "Then what if they kill _me_? Will that mean a war, too?"

"Don't make me answer that." She takes a step forwards. "And don't come loose on me now, Solaire. Return to Anor Londo we can wait for a new lead. Something will come up."

I shake my head. "I'm not going hollow. I can do this. The Chaos Servants have been hanging on by a thread ever since Oscar and I—" _I am not going hollow _"-ever since Queelag got taken down. They won't want to risk an incident, either. They'll talk, maybe lie, but they don't have the souls to make a move on me."

"You can't predict what the blighted will do; chaos poisons the mind."

I stare hard at her. "I'll be fine."

"Even if you are, what then? Lord Gwyndolin won't be happy about you taking a risk like this."

"If he isn't, he can pull up his garter belt and tell me himself."My shoulder brushes past her as I make for the stairs to Firelink's elevator. "I don't know about you and the rest of the Blades, but I actually care to find out who's guilty and who's not. See you around."

She doesn't answer. I can still feel her eyes watching me as I turn the corner.


	2. 2 of 7: Knights

If the catacombs were as cold as the grave then I don't know what to call the ride down to the New Londo Ruins. In the mean time, I lift my helmet to spit out green blossom and take a swig of estus. The heat only lasts for a few moments.

The hollows scattered around the bottom of the elevator housing don't pay me any mind. I return the favor and follow the light from the Valley of the Drakes to the small metal gate. This is usually the way that Chaos Servants get to the surface when they don't feel like mingling in the sewers. Ducking through the gate and pressing my back to the rocks, I edge along an outcropping of grass. The wind always whistles through my helmet. I don't look down.

At the end of the valley I can see the restless forms of the drakes squabbling before the great black gate of New Londo, the city of the dead and the not dead enough. Back in the day I went there on a few jobs. Now just looking gives me this urge to go back, a sort of sick fascination. There's something about the empty eyes of the Darkwraiths.

And there's something down there.

They call it the Abyss, where heroes fall. But it doesn't matter what names you give to places like that; they'll be there waiting for you just the same, bathed in shadow or in sunless fires, haunted by ghosts or stalked by demons. Places where you lose yourself.

I almost fall through the bridge. My hands scream on the ropes as I pull myself up, legs dangling. The motion's an ironic echo of the old salute to the sun. We must have looked like such fools back then. See, in Lordran, the sun is swallowed by the valleys and drowned in the swamps at their feet.

The side passage to Blighttown is nearly as dark from the catacombs. I have a skull lantern. It was a gift from a friend. So is the peaceful first leg of this journey; the infested barbarians were cleared out of this passage a long time ago, and with only the Fair Lady left to lay eggs for Blighttown, new guards can't exactly be bursting of the walls. Or the skulls, as the case may be.

Which makes it all the stranger to think she would make a move for the Parish. Maybe this is a last ditch strategy: a divide and conquer, clear out a new place for a new Blighttown? Like a hive of hornets exploding. Far-fetched, especially that close to the Forest Hunter's territory. And a band of blighted marauders don't make for the best army.

Was the Darkling right? Have I lost it?

Maybe Larentius the Pyromancer can answer some of those questions. I've never been able to work out whether he's one of the Chaos Servants, but from the amount of time he's spent down there I'm guessing he's got his finger on some part of their operation—and maybe on the burns from the Parish, if I'm lucky.

Scattered debris and broken scaffolding looms in the distance. I'm getting close to the end. I draw my sword in case any bloat flies are hanging about. I expect something will find me before I get too far, only I hope it's not one of the Servants looking for a little fun. What few of them there are I wouldn't want to tangle with alone.

No one really knows what those ones are after—word in the Burg is that it's humanity. Big surprise. They also say that chaos infused weapons, my prime suspect for those burns, get stronger the more sprites of humanity you can hold inside you. I've never used one. The Servants are pickier than your average Darkwraith, too; more likely to go for soft targets, or finish off the latest fool adventurer who thinks he's the new Chosen Undead. I wasn't too worried about them when I was working with Oscar and Lautrec.

But things change, don't they.

Now Blighttown proper comes into view in all its stinking glory. Swamp stretches on beneath moaning scaffolding that seems barely capable of holding my weight, and to my right the rickety water wheel elevator creaks on and on. I step aboard.

It seems like all I've done today is go down, deeper and deeper, into the darkest parts of Lordran.

The stench of sulfur envelopes me as I step off the lift. Across the swamp, a row of three huge pillars rise between me and that terrible nest that used to swarm with giant flies and infested horrors. There are one or two of the bloated giants still wandering over there, but otherwise there's not a single spot of movement in the swamp. Last time I braved this place I couldn't hear myself think for all the buzzing; looks like Blighttown is more dead than anyone suspected.

At least someone's keeping a few of the torches around here, and a few rays of sunlight spill down to mark the hive. I take the steps as careful as can be, pocketing my skull lamp to avoid drawing unwanted attention. I step into the filth, popping some purple moss, scanning the towering stone pillars for movement; that's where Larentius usually parks himself. Patches says the man meets someone there—no word on who, though. There are strange things down here.

Splashing comes from off to my left. I draw my sword and tear my boots from the sucking filth to turn. So much for keeping a low profile.

It's a woman sprinting towards me from the dirty gloom, half naked and built like a demon. Above her head she holds aloft a bloody meat cleaver that looks like it was made for men. Smough himself would be proud. I shift my stance and pull the shield with the scratched sun off my back. I can't make out a face or eyes—she's wearing some sort of mask. A bag? My feet slide in the murk and I raise my guard as the man eater closes in for the kill.

A shadow made of swords erupts out of the mud between me and her. The cannibal only has time to trip over the thing as it rolls right between her legs, and by the time her attacker stands back up the woman is clutching at her gut, blood spilling out. In the next instant, a red ribbon of flame twists through the air and erupts out of her chest in a shower of sparks. The man eater ignites like a bag of charcoal resin and has one chance to scream before she falls, shedding her skin beneath a cloak of smoke and fire. The swamp gurgles like a happy cat and swallows her corpse up.

And now where she stood is the Kirk the Knight of Thorns: the toughest bastard in Blighttown and chief servant of the chaos flame.

He walks towards me as if the miasma isn't even there to slow him down. Taking on the Fair Lady's most blood thirsty knight in the middle of his home turf isn't what I had in mind. I have to pull my ass out of this fire before things get even nastier than they already are.

"Kirk!" I lift my helmet, trying to ignore the tastes that get in my mouth. "Back off! I'm not here to cause trouble!" Better not mention Larentius to someone like this—who knows what would happen.

"Blades are always wanting trouble. You come down here alone and stupid, you get some." His voice is like rust flakes and blasting sand.

"Gwyndolin didn't send me for this!" I shout. A guaranteed truth, since he didn't send me at all. "I came here with a few questions, that's it."

"Here's your answer. Hold still." He flourishes the thing he used to kill the hollow—some sort of blade. It seethes red contrails that hurt my eyes. Kirk's got no plans to back down, but neither do I.

"You owe me," I say. "Remember that Taurus demon the Sunlight Warriors helped clear out of the sewer?"

"You're not one of them anymore. There aren't none of them anymore. Can't keep straight, won't keep straight. You're trouble. I don't like trouble." Only a couple yards away now, and the weapon in his hand manifests from the gloom. It could be the fang of some enormous spider. It's definitely chaos forged, as twisted and unrelenting ugly as that armor. Is it capable of pulling that job at the Parish?

If it is, I'm dead anyways. Time to flip my last silver coin; I lower my blade, lower my shield, and try to keep my voice as steady as I can. "Don't be a fool. Big things are happening up on the surface: there've been murders. The Chaos Servants are the prime suspects—you wouldn't want this bouncing back on the Fair Lady, would you?"

He's within arm's reach. I can see the blood drip from the points on his helmet, which is a lump of wire and razor that might once have been a bucket like mine. "Rubbish," he says.

"No lie. I've been sent to investigate. Do you want to prove them right? Do you want the Fair Lady's name in the Book of the Guilty?"

Kirk's feet are shifting like an angry hound. "Empty threats from an empty man."

I put as much iron into my voice as I can. "Blighttown's not quite as lively as it used to be. Having trouble hatching those eggs, are we?" In that instant the place goes so quiet that you can almost hear the gases of decay bubbling up from the swamp. Guess I touched a nerve. "How many Blades do you think we'd need to burn this all down if it came to that? A dozen? Less?"

"You've changed. Not jolly old sun gazer anymore, maybe not as stupid even." His sword lowers a fraction. "So you get to walk."

Something has started dripping into my eyes. "Oh yeah? Where to?"

"Over there." He jerks the chaos blade towards that sickening hive that rises out of the swamp. I shudder. But there's no turning back now. We pass by a few rumbling hulks of flesh, their blackened faces turning to watch us go. Far too soon we've passed through the cobweb strewn mouth on the side of the hill. I'm in the belly of the beast, now. No sweat, though—I'm about to learn all I ever wanted to know about chaos pyromancy.

One way or another.

We've gone deep into the hive now. I'd watched as Kirk put his hand to a seemingly solid door and made it fade away. Is that pyromancy at work, or something else? Now I'm standing above one of the Fair Lady's more 'maternal' servants: an egg-burdened, his muscles shriveled but his back bulging and rippling with a dozen pale white lumps. Where he stops and they begin is hard to say.

His voice is human enough, though. "What's this? Who've you brought into the Fair Lady's presence, Kirk!? Another servant, I should hope!"

"Not really." When the Knight of Thorns shoves me forwards the points of his fingers leave white hot pain on the small of my back.

"This is outrageous!" Eingyi beats the ground with his bony yellow fists, his head lolling to the side, his white eyes watering. "You are to bring their humanity to her and nothing else, do you hear?"

"I did."

I wince. That's the last thing an undead wants to hear as he walks into the chamber of the Fair Lady with two Chaos Servant's at his back.

Eingyi is not pacified. "You overgrown bush! I'll have you ejected from the Covenant! You won't be able to move for the weight of the sin you'll have heaped upon you!"

Kirk jerks his thumb at me. "Talk to this one about sin, then. It's Blade's business, after all."

Eingyi explodes in a very small, frail way. "A Darkmoon Blade! You brought a Darkmoon Blade into the presence of the Fair Lady! Has toxin claimed your mind!?"

I can hear the disgust in Kirk's voice. "Unscramble your eggs. He's nothing. He's-"Both of them fall silent the moment we step into the Fair Lady's chamber and see what's sitting by the bonfire inside.

I've seen a lot in a dozen years in Lordran. I have fought monsters made of screaming souls and seen a table set with human flesh. I've thrown lightning at dragons that could burn the air from a man's lungs and demons from the nightmare fire. I've seen what the black fascination called humanity can drive men to do. I've worn a sun so bright that it flayed my mind.

But I'd never seen the Fair Lady before now.

Half of her is beautiful, the other is a nightmare. They say it was the Chaos Flame that did that to her and her sister; twisting everything below their waists into this arachnid horror. They say that's the price they paid for trying to kindle the world themselves, for going against the Gods. No one deserves this.

Looking at her hurts. It's like coming back to something you'd abandoned years ago, finding it rotten and molded and half burned to the ground—fundamentally corrupted and lost, making all your homesickness turn into ash like everything else in Lordran.

I've seen too damn much.

"Q-Queelag? Is that you?" Her face is turned down and hidden by sheets of web-white hair. She's sitting—crumpling, collapsing—do we have words for how nightmares lie in sick beds?—because that's what it is; I can practically smell the bitter poison on her breath, even from this distance. From the small bonfire in the center of the chamber I can see small, blackened veins on her shoulders, her cheeks. There's more than one thing wrong with this girl.

Kirk steps around the bonfire and comes to her side. He's fiddling a copper colored ring onto his finger. "It is, Lady." There's nothing soft in his voice. But for the first time I wonder who's under the armor.

"My dear sister." Her head shakes upright and I can see her in the firelight. The muscles in the Fair Lady's face are slack, yet for a moment I think I see a smile. Her face reminds me of a girl back in Astora who used to beg me to carry her on my shoulders. It's only thing I remember from Astora.

You'd think it wouldn't be so cold down here, what with us almost sitting on top of Lost Izalith.

Kirk speaks again, and I realize that I had no idea how hard the man could sound."There is someone here, Lady. An intruder."

"A-are we safe? Have they touched the eggs?"The Fair Lady's human body sways from a wind that isn't there. Her disgusting, over sized lower limbs twitch a bit.

"He is a fallen knight. He is no threat."

I open my mouth to retort. Through long web-tangled hair I spot one small, milky white eye, blinking rapidly. "How sad. You must scare him away, Queelag, before anyone is harmed. Like poor Eingyi. He has been through so much…but the eggs have stopped moving."

The egg-burdened old man is weeping silently into the dirt, and Kirk has lapsed into some sort of hunched muteness.

I should never have come here. This place is too close to the river of flame and the horror that spawned all this misery. The roots of Chaos have twisted into me, too: Lost Izalith is where I found the sun. It's where Oscar fell.

"Do not cry for me, dear sister. I am fine…really, I am. I have you, don't I?"

"Of course." Kirk's voice sounds like it's been rusting under a mile of swamp water. "But this man is one of the Blades of the Darkmoon."

"Oh…" She slumps forwards, curtains of white falling over skin that looks like it would tear if you touched it. "Has he come to hurt us?"

"Yes. They are the ones that call us murderers, sinners."

"No, dear sister…you said only those that came looking to do us harm. You said…"

"No one has been harmed. I swear to you."

Her voice is thinning, like every effort is stretching her lungs into asthma. "You must not hurt anyone for my sake. I can…and the eggs, I…"

"Hush, lady. Everything is fine."

I've never heard of a Covenant whose saint didn't know what her knights got up to.

"Kirk." I manage to call out his name. My throat is as dry as paper.

The way he turns reminds me of how those living suits of armor in the Parish used to move, before they were all dismantled.

I tell him about the bodies in the Parish and the burns we found on them. That helmet of his tilts slowly to the side. Either he's laughing at me or I just walked into the dragon's nest. With someone like Kirk, maybe it's both.

"You've got courage, _Blade_," his inflection digs under my skin "but not a whole lot of sense. Just like—"

"Queelag? Who are you talking to?"

Kirk starts, and then fumbles with his hand. "No one, lady. Sleep, lady. Keep your strength." She seems to drift away once the ring is taken off his finger.

"I'm sorry for this." I open my hand to acknowledge what I've just seen and what I'm about to say. "I had no idea. But if you or one of yours is trying to pull something on the surface, it's going to blow back down here."

Kirk closes his fist on the copper ring before turning back to me. "You're no longer a friend to this land, not any part of it. For respect to those days you get one more warning: threaten the Fair Lady again and I will feed you to her."

"If you believe that, then you should know that you can't scare me off this."

He gets closer, sidling around the bonfire, a little too close for comfort with that equipment. He tilts his head towards the passage back to Blighttown, the way down to Lost Izalith. "Not scared? Maybe you should go looking for your dear friend's body. Maybe you'll find what you're looking for, this time."

"You'll leave him out of this if you know what's good for you—and you'll tell me about the burns. Now."

He scoffs. "I have no idea who did your little brothers in. And it would prove nothing if the fire had been ours. Anyone may use the teachings, if they care to learn them. We don't have a signature. We cull with whatever tools we find. We are knights."

"Knights." I spread my arms to the egg encrusted walls of the chamber, its original function masked by years of accumulated webbing, pointing above us to the rotting cess pit of a town that thrives off of death. "Is that your word for killers and degenerates? You have no idea what a knight is."

"I am no more a murderer than you," says Kirk.

The Fair Lady stirs as if listening for something very far away. She bends over her clasped hands and her shoulders shake, the mere act of praying a physical toll.

I can't help myself, can't keep my mouth shut. "You're calling me a murderer? You hollow everyone you can manage, innocent or no."

His fists clench into razor-covered clubs. "There is only one innocent in Lordran."

"And you think she makes you some kind of hero, is that it?"

"Not a hero like your Chosen Undead, no. Because I did not take the head of the Fair Lady's sister when she dared to protect her family. I did not cut down her brother as he wept ceaseless fire. I did not slay the only Daughter of Chaos who would guard her mother's prison." His body stiffens and he points, almost gently, to the spider woman. "It must break your heart that the Bed of Chaos swallowed him before he could outrage the Fair Lady."

I regret punching Kirk the moment I do it. Pain stabs into my right hand from a dozen places, and when I pull back the fist is painted red. The hurt is washed out almost instantly by rage and adrenaline pushing my senses into overdrive. I can smell dirt, dust, burning, and…soap? Eingyi is screeching something unintelligible, the Fair Lady is whimpering and flinching from sounds she can't comprehend without the ring while her silken hair shakes out around her, a cascade of spider webs. Kirk's growl seems to come from the walls themselves as he draws that damn sword, and I know the time for human speech is over. He planned this—maybe since he first saw me in the swamp. Maybe since I dared to pity what goes on between the Chaos Servants and their Saint. No difference now.

My mangled fingers are still struggling with my own blade when he comes at me. I catch the attack with pure reflex; my shield is still on my arm—otherwise I would have lost it. Light flashes through the room from the impact as the strange itchy heat of chaos fire washes over my shield, crawling and bubbling on its rim even as Kirk's sword rebounds. Taking even a lick of that full on might do me in. My broad sword refuses to come out, so my hand slips to the Darkmoon talisman at my belt. I snatch it up. Out of the corner of my eye I spot Eingyi still shouting at us as he crawls towards the spider girl—he seems more concerned with shielding her than anything else.

The talisman's cloth twists in my fingers. My mouth is moving on its own, has been for a while now. "All take you to the Abyss! Oscar of Astora was a gods damned HERO!"

A battering ram slams into my shield, pushing me back a good two feet. I peer around the edge to see that Kirk has a buckler of his own. It's so thick and twisted looking that I mistook it for part of his armor—but from what I just felt, the thing is as much of a weapon as his sword.

He laughs again, this time wild, almost hysterical. "What are you going to do with that little rag in your hand? The sun doesn't shine down here, Solaire."

My lips peel back on an animal snarl. "You asked for it, freak show." I bite out the prayer for lightning spears under my breath, squeeze the talisman, and wait. Nothing happens.

In the heat of the moment I'd forgotten; it's been ten years since I threw lightning.

Kirk actually giggles, the edge of his blade grinding across my shield. "Oh, you have lost your faith. Beautiful. Tell me which failure pushed you over the edge." Unnatural flames crawl around the rim of the shield and lick at my knuckles. "Was it when your precious killer _fell, _when he died like a fool?" I fumble for my sword and Kirk slams my shield back into my body. My arm buzzes with bone deep pain. "What made you stop laughing? TELL ME!"

He throws himself at me, full body, intent on knocking my shield away. Just tapping the man on the face has ruined my sword hand for who knows how long—getting a bear hug from him would be the end of it. But Kirk is counting on me to fumble away like that woman back in the swamp. Instead I lurch forwards and kick out as hard as I can with my plated boot. The hit lands dead center in the middle of his chest.

I've got a got over forty pounds of height and muscle on the man. One of the crueler thorns punches right through my boot, but the force of my kick connects all right. Kirk goes sprawling—right into the bonfire at the Fair Lady's feet.

As he screams, I turn and limp away and draw my sword with my left hand, shoving the talisman back onto my belt in disgust. A trail of blood follows the red hot pain in my foot. I hear scraping, crackling, and feel hot air washing over my back as I switch my shield to my right hand. In all my years of questing for the sun I'd never had to fight like this. I turn.

Kirk rises from the scattered embers like a demon from the chaos fire, his armor oily black, the ends of his quills red hot and hissing, a mantle of steam rising from his shoulders where embers roll away across films of dried swamp water and blood. He doesn't speak. He slumps low like an animal and his grip on his blade is loose. He starts to shuffle towards me, one step at a time. The sobs of the Fair Lady fill the room.

"It hurts…"

From the same direction I hear Eingyi let out a gasp of surprise. "Kirk! You blind animal! Leave the Blade and protect the Fair Lady!

Kirk hears him too. He turns, wobbling like a top. Eingy is cowering in front of the Fair Lady. A man in red and gold leans against the far wall, the picture of cool, his arms folded over gear that must have been collected from a dozen smithies. Or victims. His face is hidden by a slatted bronze helmet topped with a cheeky looking spike, but I know him; his name is Shiva of the East, and he's as likely to sell you a blade from half a world away as he is to stick it in your back.

He's also captain of the Forest Hunters.

"Gentlemen. Are we having a disagreement?"

"This Blade is mine, scavenger. Go back to your forest."Kirk shifts to the center of the room, between the Fair Lady and us. His charge seems to have quieted down—I catch Eingyi scooping up embers in his bare hands and pushing them carefully back into the bonfire.

Shiva only sounds amused. "But I came all this way." His helmet turns to me. "Salutations, Knight Solaire. I didn't expect to see Gwyndolin's servants here. At least, not in this predicament."

My mouth feels like cold clay; all my words have been shaken out by the trembling of my shield and the rattling broadsword in my fist. I used to face down dragons, not lunatics in plague pits.

Shiva clucks. "Dear me. Silence does not suit you."

Kirk's restless sword snaps through the air around him, leaving threads of red fire in its wake. "You shouldn't have come down here. You don't know where you are. But you will."

Shiva touches the red silk on his chest and tilts that strange helmet to the side. "On the contrary, Sir Kirk, I know exactly where I am. I am on a business trip."

"Trip and fall into the Abyss."

"I gladly would, my friend, if I could only light my way with that magnificent sword of yours."

Kirk's head swivels between silent me and the talkative, confusing Shiva. I can hear him running a murderous arithmetic in his head; I must come out on bottom, because he decides to give Shiva the better half of his attention. Not a flattering turn of events. Not that I'm complaining.

"You want this sword, scavenger? You come get it."

Something twinkles out of the corner of my eye, gone in an instant. A shimmer in the air.

Shiva sighs. "I was rather hoping I would not have to take it by force. Perhaps we can strike a deal, you and I. Scavengers like me can collect quite an arsenal."

Kirk clutches the hideous blade to his chest. "You will not collect this."

My eye catches a scrap of fabric on the hilt of the twisted thing, and I realize that it's a lady's favor. I'd bet my souls that it's not just any enchantment of chaos fire on that thing.

Shiva seems more relaxed by the second. "Are you quite sure? There are some trades that even you might make."

"A dung pie for that foul serpent's tongue of yours," says Kirk. "That would be even."

Amused, Shiva says, "Let me propose my counter offer: Queelag's pretty sword for Queelag's pretty sister."

Kirk turns to late to see that same blur standing in the air, a gossamer line of white extending from its fist to the recess of the pale girl's throat. Shiva's silent friend holds the strange eastern blade so perfectly still that he and his weapon could be some trick of the light, some overshot strands of the Fair Lady's arachnid bedding.

"You!" Kirk starts towards me, the only target within reach. "Traitorous, treacherous—"

I hold up my hands. "You think _I _set this—"

Shiva coughs as soft as a child, but we both hear it loud and clear. "Don't harm the fallen knight on my behalf, Kirk. And don't move from that spot."

"Harm?" Kirk turns in a circle like a corned animal. "'Harm' won't be the word for what I do to you. I'm going to poke out your eyes and plant eggs in your sockets until maggots burst through your skull, and I'll cut out your tongue and pour living fire down your throat until your guts boil out your mouth and your bones pour out your skin and I'll scrape out your carcass and string it up in the swamp for the ghouls to tan and wear until all your flesh has fallen into the filth for the fucking leeches to breed in, both of you, all of you, coming down here where you don't belong, into our business, you—you—"

The Fair Lady is weeping. Her head shakes and I can see tiny strands of hair brushing over the invisible man's blade, its infinitesimal tip standing inches away from her throat as it flexes in grief.

"Kirk." It's Eingyi from his place by the Fair Lady's side, craning his neck up to watch from his useless heap on the floor. His voice is strained like the pillars of the world. "Give them her sword."

The Dark Knight's spiked shoulders deflate.

"Oh," says Shiva. "Are you ready to make our deal, then?" He looks up from picking at his gloves. I can feel his eyes on us, dry and apathetic.

Kirk seems to memorize the look and the feel of that ugly thing in his hand, his fingers stroking the kerchief wrapped to its hilt.

I don't have to ask why: Lordran is the kind of place where everything you find has meaning to someone; a piece of armor, a scrap of clothing, a sword, a shield, a necklace, even a ring—especially a ring—the possessions of an undead are carried through every death, every rebirth. Their value comes from hope they give to us. After a while, losing them is like losing a part of yourself. And I suppose gaining new ones is like re-growing lost limbs.

No wonder the easterner is so cheerful all the time.

Kirk throws the blade to the dirt at Shiva's feet like it's caught fire. It never hits the floor; the Scavenger drops to his knees to scoop it out of the air and cradle it in his arms like a babe, rising with a reproachful sniff.

"Really, Kirk, there's no need for dramatics." He waves a hand like he's shooing away a fly. "Come, come on, time to go my silent friend. No need to be so cruel. You may come along too, Knight Solaire. If you wish."

The shimmer detaches itself from the wall and slips back to Shiva's side. Three thin drops of blood well up one by one from a tiny prick on her neck. Kirk is hovering by her now, his hands twitching by his sides. He pulls some rat-eaten fabric from under his belt and dabs the blood away.

"There you go, lady. They are all gone. Everything will be fine."

"Ah, Queelag, I am so glad…there was so much shouting. And the pain…I hope that no one was hurt."

"I am sorry, lady. You are safe now. I promise."

"Oh, sister...poor, poor Queelag…why do you cry so…"

I run.

I catch up to Shiva outside of the hive and follow him without comment given or received. We pass by the carcasses of the bloated barbarians that once guarded the entrance, now dead and split open by the easterners' blades. I can hear the shadow-one's quiet steps behind me as we climb the ramp of the scaffolding, but I'm too tired now to be afraid.

I'll be damned if I'm going to sweat for a man who puts steel to sick girl's throat.

I find Shiva waiting for me at the top of the last ladder, helmet tilted thoughtfully to the side. No strike comes when I move to walk past him to the tunnel. Instead, he falls in beside me.

I stare straight ahead into the darkness, listening to the quiet padding behind us. "So. It wasn't Kirk. Wasn't the Chaos Servants. Maybe you've got some ideas?""

"I assume you are referring to the murders in the Darkroot Garden."

I don't even bother pretending like he doesn't already know; if men like Shiva don't know the latest news in Lordran, then I wear a dress and a crown. So he makes a little "tut-tut" sound, like I'm being rude. "You know, Covenants are not one body—all must be dedicated to an action before it can be said that the entire group of us is guilty. Unless, of course, the sword hand is unaware of what the off-hand does."

"Sounds to me like someone's trying to cover their own ass."

I can hear the knowing smile in his words. "True, that distinction has done me well for me in the past. But perhaps you should take it as advice, my friend."

I just saw what happened to the last man Shiva called friend. "Advice?"

"Yes. And here is some more advice: in Lordran, everyone is guilty."

"Is that a confession?"

We come to the bridge to the New Londo Ruins. It's too narrow for us to walk side by side.

He sighs. "Not my confession." A hand waves at the bridge. "After you, Solaire."

"Like I have a choice." I reach for more green blossom, but the pouch is empty. "Well. Cheers, Shiva. I'd offer you some if I had any left."

"Is that gratitude talking? Why don't you test the bridge for me instead. It is quite old and decrepit, after all. You never know when it might collapse."

I glare at him.

It's a long way to cross the Valley of the Drakes and a longer way down. Sometimes I wonder how long it would take to reach the bottom. Most times I take extra care not to step on any bad boards; the bridge is shaky enough as it is. We're halfway across when the question occurs to me.

"What about men like Kirk?"

Shiva opens a hand to me. "Please elaborate."

"You think he's guilty, too?"

There's no answer until we're across the bridge. I don't hear or see Shiva's friend step off with me, but in moments I can feel the wind of the valley dampened by something off to my left. Shiva steps delicately onto the grassy slope of the cliff and seems to contemplate me for a moment. The wind is coming in gusts, and between howls I can hear him chuckle shortly. It is too delayed to be genuine.

"Honestly, it doesn't take much humanity to stand a lonely vigil for a friend or a lover—even in death, even if it's only for the sake of a memory and not to any tangible profit at all. You Undead aren't much different from dogs in that way. For instance, have you ever been to the grave of Artorias?"

"Artorias? The Abysswalker?" I've heard tales, but never seen it for myself.

Shiva waves my interruption away. "Mmm, yes. Quite the legend. If you had, you would have met the late legend's pet wolf. It's a huge thing, mind you, and still somehow alive. It simply refuses to leave its master's side. And to what end?" Shiva cocks his helmet at me, and I have the feeling of being peeled open by unseen eyes. I keep mine straight ahead. "After all," he says, "there's nothing there of any worth. Is it not so?"

"Can't say." What language are we speaking here?

"I suppose you can't." A short silence. "But you see, don't you? Even the lowest, foulest beasts can still keep a vigil. Kirk is not so special for that."

I have a feeling I'm not going to get anything useful out of the man, and that if I stick around for much longer he might decide he wants to take another trip out onto the bridge with me. He could probably snap his fingers and have that invisible bastard open my throat in a heartbeat.

He's talking again—I suppose it's better than the alternative. "Everyone knows that you were a true companion to the Chosen Undead. Pardon my asking, but is it true that you were there when he went hollow?"

I glance back at the hungry mouth of the Blighttown passage. "Yeah, I was there."

Shiva is watching me. "They say you undead go hollow when you die one too many times. I confess to being envious of this durability, if it is true. How many times did the Chosen Undead die?"

I stare down into the crevasse before us, the yawning shadow of the valley with no bottom. I reach for the anger. I try to make myself lash out at him, to take this where it needs to go.

It would be so easy.

"Dying isn't what does it. It's giving up hope."

Shiva is quite for a moment. "I see. Then perhaps you should continue your investigation."

"I couldn't agree more." Slowly, I reach to my belt with my unwounded hand and grab my estus flask, trying to put a little steel in my voice as I turn to go. "Maybe I'll be seeing you soon, Shiva."

Shiva watches me go and doesn't say anything. I can still feel his eyes on me even as I cut through the ruins and ride the elevator back up to Firelink.


	3. 3 of 7: Keepers

I move as soon as the elevator grinds to a halt and head out of the housing as fast as I can.

Afternoon sun spears through the clouds and blinds eyes that spent an hour too long squinting in Blighttown. It's day up at Firelink, but somehow just as chill as below.

I'm not relishing reporting Shiva and Kirk and all the rest to the Darkling. It's been months since she and I worked a case together, but it still hasn't been long enough since the last time I had to hear her say 'I told you so.'

The Darkling's not where I left her by the old Fire Keeper's cage—she probably walked back up to the bonfire. I can't blame her.

More than anything I want to sit down. I want to squat at the fire and close my eyes until the things I've seen today fade from the insides of my lids, just for a short while.

But the guilty can't escape their sins. Not even in Lordran.

A voice from up the stairs to the shrine—a woman's, sounding nervous. "My lady…such a thing is unprecedented. To be summoned to the city of the sun for an audience with the goddess, in my condition, in my station... I am not worthy. Perhaps some other of my order would be more appropriate."

"Your timidity does you no credit, nor does it pay homage to the Lords. But very well." I recognize the voice of the Lady of the Darkling and lower my sword. Her next words catch me off guard. "Hold a moment—do any of you smell that?"

"I do, lady." A large but lilting male voice. "Whatever it is, it smells of the swamp. Perhaps something from Blighttown has ventured here."

"That is why I alerted you, dolt."

Grinning, I reach the top just in time to see the three people around the bonfire draw their weapons. One is the Lady of the Darkling, and the other two are open faced men in heavy cleric's armor, hefting deadly looking long axes. Not one of them stands down for me.

There's one more person there: Rhea of Thorouland, her priestess's whites smeared with ash, her face pale beneath her hood but not as young as it used to be. When she sees me her eyes go wide, her hand leaping to her lips. She's not undead. Neither are the two clerics.

Their humanity is almost glowing through their skin.

"Didn't think it was that bad," I say.

The Lady of the Darkling twitches, then sheathes her blades. "Solaire? I thought you'd—"

"Died?" I eye her swords. "Only nearly. No thanks to you."

She ignores the complaint. "I thought you were a hollow. Have you seen yourself?"

"Didn't take _you_ for a delicate." I check. My lower portion is black with swamp filth, streaked with dust and cobwebs. Both my hands are bloody up to my elbows, and the front half of my hauberk is singed so much that I can barely make out what used to be my sun heraldry; looks like Kirk's blade got closer than I thought.

And my sword has found its way into my hand, somehow. I put it back in its scabbard with a final *click*. The clerics don't do the same.

One of them thumps the end of his axe into the ground. He's been around since the days of the prophecy, though we never spoke enough to get his name straight; clerics and the undead don't get along, especially now. "What a stench. You know this 'man_'_, my lady?"

The Darkling waves his words away with the back of her hand. "Nico, you idiot—it's Solaire of Astora. He's one of my brothers."

The other guard, the brown haired one, grunts wordlessly. I've never heard him speak.

"I'm Vince, my lady," says the first, the blonde one. "But that creature over there cannot be a Darkmoon Blade. In point of fact, he's one of the last Sunlight Warriors. They were an odd bunch, that's for sure. Can't say I was sorry to see them go."

I move to the Darkling's side. "That's some gratitude, pretty boy. Do you even know how to use that axe?"

"I don't feel I owe much gratitude to corpses." He moves closer to his silent counterpart. I've seen these two guarding Rhea while she' tends to the Firelink bonfire—I guess they didn't want a repeat of what happened to the last Keeper.

The Lady of the Darkling sounds like she's had enough of Vince—her and me both. "I know my friends, fool—tell me otherwise again and you'll not be one of them." She gives me one more look, as if confirm her own words. I want to lift my helmet and smile at her. Somehow it seems impossible.

Rhea touches the Darkling's arm. "Forgive Vince and Nico, my Lady. They are only doing their duty."

The Lady removes Rhea's hand from her shoulder, not unkindly. "I bid you remind your friends that the undead hunts of old are over. And that they now stand in the presence of servants of the Dark Sun. Now hold a moment." She seems to dismiss the clerics from her attention. "Solaire: I was hoping I could tell you this before you wandered down into another death trap."

"I was thinking the Abyss next," I say.

Again she stares at me. I can feel her eyes boring holes in my chest, as if checking to make sure it's not empty.

I brush it off. "One of my famous jokes. Ha-ha."

"Very amusing. You'll want to know that Lady Gwynevere and Lord Gwyndolin have agreed on a meeting to the purpose in Anor Londo, along with any faithful followers of Gwyn." She nods to Rhea. "Rhea has been requested as the representative of the clerics of the Way of the White, though due to her…condition, she shall send a proxy." I can hear a faint note of contempt in her voice. The clerics shift uncomfortably, though Rhea only bows her head. "I shall be there as the proxy of Lord Gwyndolin," continues the Darkling. "For your rather unique history, Solaire, they thought it best that you attend as well."

"What's this about?"

She shakes her head. "Best keep silent on that until the time is right."

"They must be big plans to get all three holy Covenants together for a chat," I press. "I assume Gwynevere's representing her Guards. Who else is going to be there?"

A note of warning enters her voice. "Stay away from Ornstein, Solaire."

Vince and Nico stiffen for a moment, and Rhea looks away from us again; the name of Ornstein is always followed by another name, even if no one dares to speak it out loud.

I stand up taller. "I'm not afraid of him. Of either of them."

She raises the hand with our covenant ring on it, a silent reminder of her rank. "Which is much the problem. That reminds me: tell me that you've come back from Blighttown with more than that delightful smell."

I pick my words carefully, let's say for the Fair Lady's sake. "Sure. I got an alibi from the Knights of Thorns, and I don't think they're in any condition to make a grab for the surface. They're not…" I try to find the words to explain what I saw, but nothing seems to fit. "…things are worse down there than we thought."

The Darkling just stares at me. "And? Anything else? Any guesses on the burns you were so keen about?"

I shake my head. "This thing is air tight, lady. Shiva was right: the Covenant leaders can't account for everything their people are doing. I need to—"

"_Shiva_?" The Darkling's hands inch towards her swords again, some sort of unconscious urge. I've never seen her so jumpy at Firelink. "You _met_ with Shiva of the East? _Tell me_ that you took him down."

I run a hand over the top of my helmet—it's flat. How long has the feather been gone? "He got me at a disadvantage, Darkling. I didn't have the chance."

"You didn't even try?" she shakes her head at me, disgusted. "You know how much sin he's accumulated: it was your duty as a Blade to punish him."

I could say I thought of trying. It wouldn't exactly be a lie. "Now look here—"

"Damn it, Solaire!" I can hear real anger in her voice, and something else—a hunger I heard from behind another bronze helmet a long time ago. I can understand the feeling, especially when it comes to bastards like Shiva. And if you get a little of their humanity along with the ear, well…

I give her a cold smile. "Look at it this way: now you get to be in on the hunt."

She misses my tone. "Oh? Where did you see him?"

"He took me to the Valley. That was where we parted ways—"

She brushes past me, drawing her swords. "He must be going for the back way to the Darkroot—he'll have to sneak past the drakes, though. We may still have time." She dismisses me from her attention. "Vince, Nico, come with me. Gwyn can spare a few soldiers for his son's justice, I think."

The two clerics look at each other, then at Rhea. The young girl nods at them. "Petrus is here as well, and Knight Solaire can escort me to him. With all that his happening, this is more important than I."

"I'm going with the Lady," I say. Maybe I'll make Shiva walk the bridge _first_, this time.

The Darkling rounds on me. "You've done enough today. Stay with the girl—with Rhea, until you're sure she's safe. Then meet me at Anor Londo in the Princess's Chambers."

I face her dead on. "You think I can't handle this job, is that it? Just try and stop me."

"Fine." The Darkling leans towards me, visor angled down, her voice soft. "You're off the hunt for the Parish Killers."

"_What?_"

She holds up three fingers, one of them ringed. "You disobeyed me by going to Blighttown, and you disobeyed Lord Gwyndolin, and to top it all of you almost got yourself killed—don't try to lie to me, Solaire; you're a mess, and I can see the shaking."

I clench my hands to stop them twitching. "It was a lead. We still don't know if—"

"The only lead you got out of this was from a damn _Forest Hunter_. You do realize that they're the prime suspects for the Parish killings." She throws her arms out. "And you let their top man _go_."

I point at her heart. "You expected me to just wait for Gwyndolin's go ahead, like some sort of puppy. I don't know about you, sister, but _I_'_m_ not the one who thinks lady-lord shits golden snakes."

"How dare you." She's almost by my ear. I can hear her breath whistling through the slots on her visor. "Watch your mouth, Solaire. And remember who took you in when everything seemed lost, and who your friends are now."

"I fucking remember." My hands sting against the bronze when I push her off. "But I'm not Gwyndolin's Gods damned charity case. Or yours."

She steps back into her balance like a dancer. "I've had enough of this. You're off the case. I'm going to catch Shiva and do what you couldn't be bothered to—be at Anor Londo today or throw your Covenant ring in the Abyss. And you can jump in after it for all I care."

"Then you better hurry. You've got some _prime game_ to catch." I clench my jaw. "And watch your back: he's got that silent bastard with him."

"I don't need the advice of a fallen Knight." She jogs down the stairs, regal bronze blurring away around the corner. Vince and Nico lumber after her excitedly, casting torn glances back at Rhea and me—maybe they got bored of babying the girl.

I go to the cliff side and kick a brick out of the ruined all. It shoots through the air for a few feet and then disappears into the fjord. I wince; the kick reopened the puncture in my foot.

Thanks, Kirk.

Sighing, sagging, I lean against the wall and raise my heel for a few moments. Black drops plink into the grass.

"Are you wounded, sir?" Rhea approaches with her hands clasped beneath her sleeves. "I know a few minor miracles of healing."

"Don't bother." She's kept a good distance and kept her hood low, and she's staring at the ground. Is shame something the Fire Keepers inherit? Just like how Anastacia of Astora used to act—the three of us, her and Oscar and I…I wonder how much they remembered of Astora. I wonder if they would have forgotten as much as me by now.

When she died he made me swear not to speak her name aloud.

The cold feeling like a mantle of lead, I put my foot back on the ground and stand. I start to talk to keep my blood flowing. "I haven't seen you and your boys around lately. Where've you been?"

Her head bobs. "Vince and Nico have become restless these past years, since I rekindled the bonfire here. They swore to protect me, even when we were children, but…" she stares even harder at the ground "none of us thought events would transpire as they have."

She's talking about Oscar's prophecy. Right. Of course, that's all clerics ever talk about. "Disappointed, huh?"

She flinches. The living tend to be nervous around the undead—I can't say that I blame them. "It is not my place to pass judgment. It is my hope that I may still be of some use to those who hold fast to this world."

"I suppose that I should be thanking you for giving us sods a second chance. Your friends don't seem too pleased, though. You didn't say where the three of you have been hiding."

"Nico and Vince have had me accompany them on hunts in the catacombs. Most of the necromancers' servants have been cleansed, but there are still taints left to be excised."

I think of Patches. I suppose she has a point. "You've gone that far away? I didn't think Keepers could leave their bonfires"

I'm not looking at her face—strange how being undead makes it harder to look the living in the eye—but I catch a flash of surprise. "Do you not know, sir? The Darkmoon Knightess is also a Fire Keeper."

Had I forgotten? The first time Oscar and I ever met the Darkling she was standing by that bonfire in Anor Londo. She must have mentioned this. But every other Keeper I've ever seen has never left their charge, and I've been working with the Lady for years. I must have forgotten. It gives me an ill feeling inside.

I ask Rhea how she knows for sure. She's too humble even to pity my ignorance. "Every Fire Keeper is marked by the flame….and it is not a pleasant thing, the burden of the Lord's fire. It is easy for one who has suffered to sense that suffering in others, to guess its nature."

'Marked by the flame.' I think of the Fair Lady; is all of her illness due to the poison in her? And Anastacia—the last Keeper—Oscar says her hometown, her own father, cut her tongue out. Is it the bonfire that gives them the pain? Or the pain that draws them to the bonfire?

I take special care not to look her in the eye, now. "And what's your suffering?"

"It is a difficult thing to describe. I would rather you not make me do so."

"Have it your way." My foot seems better now. I raise my hands, offering a change of subject. "What about the Lady of the Darkling?"

Surprise, again. "You do not already—ah—I" she stops for a second, flustered, and speaks more carefully next time. "By the tones you took with each other, I had assumed that you…Are you not a friend to her?"

"Sometimes."

"And you have never seen her face?" she asks, sounding surprised.

I suppose us undead get too used to wearing armor. "No. You don't take your helmet off on the job. Does she have cat's lip or something?" I force a chuckle.

Rhea looks away from me. "You should not jape so. But I have spoken out of turn as well. You must ask her if you wish to know."

"Yeah, that sounds like a great idea." I push off and head up the hill towards the Firelink ruins.

Rhea shuffles behind me. "I should not have said anything. Here, please, I beg that you replenish yourself before we go on."

"Thanks." Stupid of me—I'd almost forgotten I was out of estus. I cut towards the fire on my way to the chapel and dip my estus flask into the flames. The heat is only distant. I tilt my helmet to take a few sips while I'm there and then refill the bottle, but the feeling wicks away in seconds. Rhea's been watching me again. I nod up at her before straightening.

She bows. "It…gladdens me to be of some use. Few have come this way these past few years. I fear that there are not many of your kind with the will to reach this place."

"I'm sure most would agree it's for the best." I head towards the broken chapel: there's a pool of rainwater there that I'd like to make use of.

"Where are you going, my lord?"

"To get this smell off. Petrus should be up by the elevators, right?" I manage a smile, though of course she won't see it. "You don't need me to coddle you."

She doesn't answer. When I stand before the door-less mouth of the chapel I realize that Rhea is still with me, standing silently a few feet off to my right.

I take the steps. "Was there something you wanted, cleric?"

I can hear her take a few breaths. "If you must ask, yes: I wished to speak to you, for I have had questions for you for some time, if you would not mind answering them."

"Let me guess."

Her voice rushes a little. "Let me explain myself, sir. If not for the Chosen Undead—"

"You would have died in the Tomb, I know." I wade into the pool of rainwater. It's been sitting there without sun for days. If I was still alive I would be shivering like a fool.

Rhea leans over the edge of the water, probably intent on catching my words through the splashing. "How did you know of that?"

"Oscar. That was his name, you know." The water around me is turning black as I douse myself.

"Yes, I…I had heard you were a great friend to him." For the first time she sounds excited, even pleased.

I lift up my bucket helmet and wash my face, then slide it back down. Rhea lets out a little gasp—I must have splashed her.

"Yeah. I was a great friend."

"You…you assisted him on his quest?"

"Most of the time. Other times he told me what he'd done, later. I thought I recognized your name."

She's standing with her hands behind her back, staring down into the rippling pool. "I did not know him long, but he seemed to be a good man. What was he like?"

"I suppose that's fair." I take a breath. "He liked to laugh. He never stopped fighting. And he was never afraid." Dried blood flakes from my hands and into the water. "I think that was why he died."

"Oh. I did not know that about him. Thank you." Her voice is like a child's, so small, so like the Fair Lady's, like so many men and women who I've passed by in Lordran. The land of the giants knows how to make you feel small.

"Were you there when it happened, Knight Solaire?"

"Yeah." I step out of the water. Something weighs at me by the entrance, that lead weight again. I brace my hand against the doorway and wait for it to pass.

Rhea steps in front of me. Her chin is lifted for the first time, like she's about to go into battle. "I am sure that you did all that you could. I have not come to know you well these past years, my lord, but I believe that Oscar kept good company."

Like the warmth of the fire, like the water of the chapel, her pass through me like the touch of a ghost.

"You believe that? If you knew me you wouldn't."

I push myself off the door way and start walking.

Rhea follows in silence the rest of the way to the elevators, to where Petrus is waiting. When I go she bids me farewell, not meeting my eyes. "Vereor Nox," she says.

I keep walking. _Good company. Good friends. _I'm sick to death of Firelink.

Sick to death.

Ha-ha.

I have a feeling that the Lady won't find Shiva. I think she knew it too. Maybe that's why she was so furious, because she knew that there are some men you'll never catch and hated to hear me say it to her face. I can relate; there's a yellow man who squats in the center of a spider web of debt and lies from behind a soapstone sign in Anor Londo. Like a lot of us he's settled down some since Oscar's prophecy went bust. For him 'settling' means trading in secrets instead of blood.

That's a thought—an unpleasant one, one I'd swore I'd never fall back on. But maybe I'm not out of leads after all. I fish in my belt for my homeward bones. Looks like I still have one from the bonfire—the Lady's bonfire—in Anor Londo. Will she know if I use it?

But I'm going there anyways. I'll just make a little detour on the way to the Princess. No one has to know. Except Lautrec, of course. And maybe he knows something of his own. I think back on what Patches said, back in the catacombs. Does the yellow knight have his fingers in this after all?

Not that I need another excuse to beat the murderous bastard's face in.

A take a few minutes to think before I crush the bone. It gives me plenty of chances to change my mind, but I'm too tired to try; I have a feeling that he's my last chance to light this fire before the case goes stone cold.

After a flash of light, after a bone plucked from the Lady's charge (the fire's still going, so she must be alive), after a long walk across the sun baked bridge beneath the clouds of molten gold and the crumbling sand-castle spires, I watch my shadow bend ahead of me and slip through the crack in the palace gates. I'm guessing they're open as some sort of sign of goodwill to the Covenants. The sun spills in around me as I slip inside, casting brands of light through the dimness, across the pillars, across the tapestries, across the statue-still armor of the sentinels at their posts. I slip through one of the halls without being noticed. It only takes a few minutes to find the secret spot on the ground and clear its dust with the toe of my boot. Lautrec's signature glitters oily and spit-white around my foot, hidden in an alcove behind a vase. No one's around.

I crouch down and press my hand to the sign.

"I know you're there."

A dark world, a shadow mockery of Anor Londo sweeps in around me. I have no idea where this place came from and I don't care to. The echo I heard came from somewhere down a marble corridor, its exact source impossible to locate. The shadows reel and pitch when I lift my skull lantern again.

"I'm here to talk, Lautrec! Come out! Show yourself!" I know it's him. The bastard's going to make me wait. Another one of his petty games. Refusing to budge, my hand gripping the pommel of my broad sword, I stand my ground. "Come out!"

A sound barely human bounces back—a sort of cough and a choke and a giggle all in one breath. "I am indisposed. You will have to come to me, stranger. I'm up ahead. I can see your lantern—just a little closer." Something's wrong; it's his voice alright, but the words are slurred, strangled, as if something inhuman was trying to imitate the man's usual husk.

I check behind me for any friends of his. Shadows and closed doors behind, pitch black beyond. The hallway's ceiling is tall enough for a giant and wide enough for one, too. I hope that this world doesn't have its own guards.

Or did it send me to the wrong place?

My eye catches some spots on the floor. I shuffle closer, hand itching to draw my blade. Dark spots, three of them in a sort of trail. My breath catches. I push on. The spotty trail gets thicker, more consistent, a long snake of black. The light catches the edges of an empty door frame as I step into a lightless side room and I see a form huddled on the far wall. A man in rusty yellow.

He's squirming in a pool of crimson. The arms built into his cuirass cradle a weeping slit of red between them, and his lap is bathed in red and brown. His plated shoulders and hips rattle against the chill in the room as the faceplate of the crowned helm trembles up, its piss-yellow surface bulbous and many ported like the eye of a monstrous fly.

"It's me, Lautrec." I don't remember crossing the darkness to kneel down beside him.

He slumps towards my voice. "Old cheerful Solaire of Astora? Didn't he say that he would kill me the next time we met?"

"It looks like someone beat me to it."

This can't be happening.

He hacks, and with it blood oozes from the lower pinholes of his helmet, dripping off its sharp edge and into his loosely cupped hands in his lap. The wall is the only thing keeping him upright. "I don't believe it's him. You must have stolen his clothes."

The cool air of this nightmare Anor Londo prickles my face as I lift my helmet off and set it aside, getting a close look the wound in Lautrec's chest. I don't dare move his arms out of the way; his body looks like it's been deflated somehow, crumpled. The liquid coming out of that hole is thicker than blood is supposed to be. And there's blackening around the edges. The smell. _The burns._

My mouth is dry. My throat is wool. "What happened, Lautrec?"

Lautrec doesn't seem to hear. "By the Lords, your face_…_ you…you really are slipping, Solaire. But I can help you, yes, I can. It's a good thing you came back…"

He reaches out, blindly, and I lean away. His fingers twitch as I repeat my question. "What happened?"

"All the lies in Lordran." I can hear the blood bubbling behind his smile. "Your secret. And my secret. Too many secrets and I burst like a fat little mosquito. And my good fellows, my so called friends, I did not have enough. They don't make friends like they used to. But you know that, don't you?"

"The murders, Lautrec, you must have heard. In the Parish. You" I tear my eyes away from the emptied space in his chest "who did this to you?"

"That's a pricy tip you ask for."

"I should have booked you years ago, I should have, so you owe me this. And all I need is the guilty one's name." I watch him quiver as I speak. Somehow it's nothing like how I imagined this would happen. I always hoped it would be me.

"Fine. Your guilty name, then." He looks up at me again, a vision of a dozen eyes with blood behind them. "Knight Lautrec of Carim. I cut the throat of Oscar's silent paramour. And dozens more saints like her, poor, lost, helpless, maiden souls. I took their humanity for myself. There's your guilty name, and you're too late to stop any of it. Such a terrible shame." 

"I shouldn't have helped him break you out of that Gods damned cage. But he could never see what you were."

He coughs his insides up again. "I often think…I often think the same thing of you, Solaire."

"Gods damn you." Blood drops from my fists, where my nails bite into my palms.

Lautrec's helmet lolls back and forth. "She was so very quiet. Even when I cut her throat she died so quietly. She put her head against the bars and I could see the ash in her hair. Beneath it was the color of corn silk. It was like down, she was so young. I could have been her father, but I…I thought she was resting, you see, I had fooled you all. Fina forgave me. And I was such a _clever man_.

I grab his shoulders and shake him. I want to scream at him, to hate him for everything he's done. The fluted bronze shoulder guards are dimpling under my fingers, and now my voice is rasping like his, like two old ghosts shouting to each other across the Abyss. "I can't do this without help, Lautrec. I never could. Give me one of your blighted tips. Give me anything. It doesn't make sense anymore."

"My Goddess Fina, she forgives me for what I have done. Maybe she would even forgive you…" His glove quakes into the air, a mitt of red with a raised spot on his middle finger. "The ring. She loves me for the ring, my proof of my love…she loves me…"

His hand is the only part of him that's moving. I grab it and squeeze as hard as I can, trying to keep him awake. "Help me, Lautrec. I'll forgive you, I swear that I will."

Lautrec starts to shake. "You. Of all people. _You._" He's shaking—no, he's laughing.

He's laughing at me.


	4. 4 of 7: Lords

Around me, the nightmare twists into a whirlpool.

The vase that hid Lautrec's signature shatters when my shoulder slams into it, absorbing my ejection from the world of the sign. Spraying out before me, washing over the boundaries of the sphere of light cast by the torch above, a great whorl of clay dust and fragments rolls to coat the corners of the room, to christen the real palace of the Lords in the film of dirt and cutting edges. Welcome home.

This is real. Where I was, that was a mistake. A mutation, like a dream. A nightmare of the ones who built this place. Now the summon sign is gone as if it never was, the world locked away forever like another prison cell. Only this one will hold the Yellow Knight forever.

I can't think of a better place for him to stay.

It takes me an hour to make it back to the main hall. When I do, the steps up to the Princess's antechamber are longer than they ever were before. The gate is still open behind me; my shadow lumbers ahead of my boots, its arms and hands distorted to demonic size. There's no one else here. I wonder if the Darkling's arrived already. I could use some company right now.

The thought of meeting Gwynevere makes me ill. I was there when she gave Oscar the Lordvessel, and I was there when we lost it. They scoured the ruins of Lost Izalith for years but they never found his body. No doubt it burned to ash. No doubt there's nothing left.

I step into the antechamber. Sunlight pours in from the stained glass windows high above, making deep shadows out of the pillars. The quiet piles on all the way up to the shadows in the rafters. But the silence of a predator doesn't last forever.

"Guests usually announce themselves. Or have the Undead ruined courtesy, too?" The aristocratic bur of a voice comes from a balcony above the second floor, above the door to the Princess's chambers. I can only make out a glitter of red gold curtains. My sight isn't what it used to be.

"Solaire of Astora," I say. "Of the Darkmoon Blades."

The head of a lion—the helmet of the Dragonslayer—appears from around a set of red drapes, followed by the rest of his overblown golden armor. He tucks his spear, a weapon suited for giants, into the crook of his arm. "Look at this, Smough. The favored golden mutt comes strutting back with his new collar. Do you think he wants us to be impressed?"

A rumble in the air replies before I can. "I dunno what you're talking about half the time." The gravid golden belly of Smough appears from behind a pillar to my right, his voice an empty boom, his fingers flexing around the handle of the man-sized—God sized—

mallet knocked over his shoulder. He's enormous as ever, maybe four times my height and the Lords know how many times my weight. At least he's on the other side of the room.

I ignore Ornstein's jabs and give the Executioner my fakest grin. "I thought you were one of the pillars. Have you gained weight?"

"Maybe soon." Smough's head piece tilts up to the balcony. "Ornstein! Can I eat the smart mouth?"

Ornstein runs his hands along the railing, the claws of his armor audibly scraping even at this distance. "Certainly not. The Princess gave the Darkmoons free passage. And _oh_ they must be proud to count this one among their number."

Smough scratches the top of his helmet. "Huh?"

"Your statue makes for better conversation than you, Smough." Ornstein vaults over the edge and lands with feline grace before us, except most cats don't carry sixteen foot spears and don't shake the floor when they jump. Of course, the man's not as large as Smough, but then again what is?

I salute him lazily. "I thought I heard a kitty hissing up there. Still playing with that oversized toothpick?" I lean towards him conspiratorially. "Haven't seen any dragons around lately. You might want to trade that in for something more your size."

Ornstein's helm tilts back. "As you did with your own Covenant? I know my duty. _I _do not abandon brothers to disgrace and attrition."

"Yeah, you're real dutiful. I bet you'd be like a brother to Gwynevere, if you could stop drooling over her."

Ornstein stoops down so that his snarling lion is right in my face. "Did you come here to plead for protection again? There are only knights here, Solaire of Astora. Something you will never be, no matter how much busy work Lord Gwyndolin puts you to."

I lift my helmet to show him my smirk. "That's funny, because I don't see any knights. Maybe you should make one out of Smough to make up the shortage."

The Executioner's chortle echoes through the chamber. "The man's got more sense than you do, Ornstein."

"The discussion is closed, oaf." The Dragonslayer lowers his voice to me, his talon of a finger sinking into my chest. "And you. You are just another fool who thinks he knows _better_, who believes himself so intimately acquainted with honor as to be its champion against his very Lords. I will tell you what happens to such men."

"Let me guess: Smough needs to get his lunch from somewhere, right?"

The Executioner snorts again, like a rooting pig. Ornstein's red tail of hair shakes out around him. His voice is metallic and sour in my ears. "No. Men like you fail, and men like you fall." His golden fangs fill my vision, sharp and genuine. "They leave howling wounds in the world. What do you think you will leave? A sore, or a scratch, or a stain." The butte of his spear lifts off the ground. "I think nothing. Nothing at all."

"Go the Abyss."

A voice calls from across the way before I can draw my sword. "What's going on here?"

Ornstein straightens up to the Lady of the Darkling coming out of the elevator between us and Smough, her hands resting by her hilts. The great Executioner lumbers to meet her before any of us can speak next.

"Hello, pretty lady. You just can't stay away from old Smough, can you?"

"If only." She pays him as much mind as a wall, going to stand before the Dragonslayer who is still twice her height. "Sir Ornstein."

The man goes still like I've never seen. You could mistake him for a statue or a cat ready to pounce. "My Lady. What draws you away from the Princess?"

"I heard shouting." She turns half away from him and gestures to me and Smough. "What do you intend with this behavior? The children of Gwyn ordered cooperation, not petty quarrels."

Ornstein thrusts a golden clawed finger at me. "That _man_ is a disgrace to everything the holy covenants stand for."

I keep my hands behind my back and watch the sun shear through the windows.

The Darkling seems unfazed. "Lord Gwyndolin accepted his oath. Do you question the will of the Lords?"

Ornstein's chest rises. "Never."

"Neither do I," says the Darkling.

I try to speak, to take hold of my voice and get one more jab in on that pompous asshole. But the words just don't come.

After a few moments of silence, Ornstein bows his head. "You speak the truth, my lady. Best regards to you."

Smough snorts like a pig. "She can have my best regards right now."

The butt of the dragon slaying pike raps against the floor and I swear I see the Executioner jump. "You are mocking your better, Smough. Remember that." Then he steps back to let me pass to the elevator. I follow the Lady, deliberately not looking over my shoulder.

Ornstein's been around as long as the Lords themselves. Most speak of him and Smough in hushed voices, if they even dare to speak at all; they say he slays us as happily as he slays dragons.

So why did the Darkling make him nervous?

She keeps her voice low as we step into the elevator. "I told you to stay away from him."

"Maybe you should have told him that. Did you catch Shiva?"

"_Solaire_."

"I'll take that as a no."

Out of earshot of the Princess's royal guards, the quiet in her voice disappears as soon as we're inside the shaft—and so does the control I have over the shaking in my hands. I hide them behind my back, though it's dark enough in here already. "Lords—this isn't a joke. Are you that dedicated to ruining this meeting?" I can't see, but I can hear her brass clinking as she crosses her arms. It's a familiar sound.

The grin I put on hurts my lips. "I just can't help myself. Maybe you should cut my ear off and be done with it, save Ornstein the trouble."

"That was not funny."

"Ha-ha." I grab my estus flask, pop the cork, and knock it back. The warmth trails down my insides and disappears even before the glass goes dry. I don't remember having drunk so much already. Through the dark I see light from the fresh bottle that the Lady of the Darkling holds out to me. I take it. I drain this one even faster than the other, the liquid sunlight sloshing wildly in my hand before it disappears.

I return it, empty. "Thanks."

"I need you on your feet for this." A sliver of light cuts down across us as we near the stop. I can see her fingers rubbing the pommel of her rapier. "Listen." Another pause. "Back at Firelink. You should know that I regret telling you to die for this Covenant."

I blink through the light as the platform comes to a stop. "Shouldn't I have?"

"Maybe," she says. "But not for scum like Shiva."

"And what if you knew that I was as bad as him?"

The two of us step off the platform. "I would not believe that. No matter what Ornstein says. Or what I may have said."

"You're too kind, Darkling."

"I—" she stops, staring at me. "By the Lords, what happened to your hands?"

"They're fine." I put them back behind me. "A ran into some…into some trouble, on the way over here."

She's crossed her arms again. "Go on."

"Lautrec of Carim," I say. "He attacked me, in one of the side halls. Jumped out with those damn shotels and tried to take my head off—I think he'd gone hollow. There was nothing left in there."

Her stillness reminds me of Ornstein. "And?"

"I had to beat him off to make distance for my sword. I took him down clean after that. Right through the heart." An idea occurs to me. "Strange thing, too—the wounds that hollowed him were burns. I think they were the same as from the Parish."

After a moment, the Darkling claps me on the shoulder. "You should tell the Princess. But I am proud of you, Solaire; it is…difficult to slay one who was once your friend, no matter what they have done."

"He was scum," I say. "Worse than Shiva." I'm a good liar.

"It took you long enough to realize that. But I am glad you had the strength to finish it." She jerks her head at the doors across from us. "Now, come, it's unwise to keep Gwyn's children waiting."

"After you, Darkling."

I follow her into the Princess's chambers.

Lady Gwynevere prefers comfort over pomp. In fact, she'd probably look pretty unimposing sprawling there on that fine carpeted dais if both her and it weren't about as wide and half as tall as her very bedroom. Those scraps she covers herself in always struck me as a bad idea, especially considering her dimensions. It's unnerving to say the least—though I suppose I should count myself lucky I don't find it _too _unnerving.

I guess Petrus of Thoroland isn't a lucky man; he seems pretty much transfixed, standing there before her. And he's a Cleric, too. It's barely even a challenge to think up some snide remarks, so I bite my tongue.

Gwyneve turns to me, her literally and figuratively broad smile flagging just a bit. "Ah. You're finally here, Solaire. We heard raised voices below." She lifts one chocolate colored eyebrow at my escort.

"A minor misunderstanding with your guards," says the Darkling.

The Princess blinks slowly. "I hope this will not be recurring misunderstanding. We have work to do, after all."

"I understand," I say.

"Then to the main." She nods to the Lady of the Darkling. "I thank you for attending in my brother's stead." She beams at Petrus, who is visibly sweating. "And I thank you, Petrus, for coming on behalf of those clerics who remain in Lordran." At his name, Petrus jerks his eyes around to me and bows hurriedly. Gwynevere goes on, "My brother's Darkmoon Blades, the Way of the White, and my own Princess Guards rally from across Lordran even as we speak."

"Rally?" I glance at the Darkling, my mind racing to recall her words to me back in Firelink. What in the Abyss is this about? She only nods at Gwynevere, who seems inclined to go on with or without my attention.

"The Forest Hunters have bled the good people of Lordran dry for far too long, and their latest outrage is a sign that they intend to escalate this stale mate. It is time to retake the Darkroot Forest from them."

The bottom drops out of my stomach. "But we don't even—we haven't proved anything yet! It could be—"

Gwynevere huffs. "Really, Solaire. My own Guards were slain—with cowardly methods, I might add—on the very edge of that foul little wood. Who else could it have been?"

"The burns, they—"

She waves one oversized, over manicured hand. "Ah yes. _The burns_. The Lady of the Darkling related what little evidence they provided as well as your _unorthodox_ investigative methods. I must say I understand why you were removed from the inquest." Her voice softens. I have to lean my head back to fully meet her eyes. "Child, I know that the Chosen Undead was your friend. With the circumstances of his death, I understand your obsession with the Bed of Chaos and the creatures that guard it. But unless these wild excursions of yours can conclusively prove that the Forest Hunters were not involved, then I see no reason to doubt the theory. Do you?"

"I...uh…" I look to the Lady of the Darkling, but she gives me a shrug and looks hungrily back to the Princess. I can feel a headache coming on.

"I did not think so." Gwynevere switches off the honey, turning from me in a swirl of warm air and dancing locks. She motions invitingly towards the Darkling. "Do you have word from the rest of the Blades?"

She nods. "We've amassed a sizable force at the Parish. Andre has generously provided us with the key to the gate of Artorias."

"Excellent. And you, Petrus? What does the Way of the White say?"

He clears his throat weakly, not meeting her gaze. "Many have come from across the land, my Lady, assembling around Firelink Shrine. I can marshal them at your word."

I look between them in complete disbelief; for how long have they been planning this war?

Was there ever even a moment today when I could have stopped this insanity?

Gwynevere claps her hands once. "Glorious! My own followers are making the journey even as we speak. This will be a luminous day, my friends—the day that our Covenants join together in all faith, forming a spear of fire to ignite the deepest heart of the Darkwood!"

Like moths drawn to the flame. "That's great, sister." My fingers are prodding unconsciously at my empty green blossom pouch. "Care to explain why I needed to be here for this little pep rally?"

The Lady of the Darkling doesn't look over at me, but I hear her voice quite clearly. "Solaire..."

Gwynevere favors me with the same smile she gave the others. "A fair question. As you know, the Forest Hunters are a slippery foe. But overwhelming force would cure this problem. Think of us as men and women in need." Her eyebrows rise again.

My mouth runs ahead of me, faster on the draw than my brain. "You have no idea, do you? You really think I could dredge up whatever's left of the Sunlight Warriors—if there even are any left—and all to go on some _crusade?_" The others give me sharp looks.

Gwynevere cocks her head, not seeming to care about my outburst. "You were their leader. If there were any left then they would follow you."

I'm too tired to apologize. "We—they didn't have leaders. Just a cause." The pain behind my eyes has spread to the back of my head. "And it wasn't to slaughter our way through Lordran in some sort of war band."

"No, I suppose not." Her lips don't look so full and smiling anymore. "You'd rather be down in the muck with thieves and the murderers, lending your hands to the hopefuls and the degenerates."

"If they'd take them, yeah."

She gives a real frown this time. It's impressive on a face that full. "Like that foul little 'Patches' creature. Like the Yellow Knight."

My teeth make an angry sort of plastic sound against each other. "Not any more."

The Lady of the Darkling's voice is about as flat as one of her blades. "If I may, my Lady: if there is anyone who understands the fickleness and faithlessness of the lower peoples of Lordran, it is Solaire."

I don't look at her. "You could say that."

Gwynevere wafts perfumed air into my face with a flicked wrist. "I can see that this is getting us nowhere. Very well. We shall do this without the aid of your former" her nose wrinkles 'colleagues.'"

I shake my head. It doesn't help. "I don't believe this. You're talking about marching straight into the Forest Hunter's home turf. They've got more than prickly bush men in there."

She glares down her aquiline nose at me and lifts her lip, showing a half row of perfectly straight teeth. "Is your faith that weak? These are holy warriors you speak of, my acolytes, those of my father, of my brother. There is nothing that they would flag in the face of. There is no order that they would not obey." She leans towards me, fabrics and perfumes swaying through the air, her eyes like earthy fluorite. "Can you count yourself among them?"

I point at the Darkmoon talisman on my belt with the finger that has my Covenant ring, turning so they can all see. "Here's my oath. For what it's worth to you." Enough, it seems, to lose the Princess's suspicion. She doesn't even look at me as we wrap things up.

So that's it. So much for the Book of the Guilty. So much for a knight's duty to the people, or what's left of them; in the end it comes down to the will of the Lords, to whether an overgrown Princess is feeling peeved. And we all get to burn for her. My head aches like iron struck on an anvil; a whole damn garden of green blossom wouldn't make this one go away.

We close with a prayer to Gwyn, me kneeling by the Darkling. I watch her clasp her hands and rock back and forth and I listen to the shirring whisper of her expiations, muffled to unintelligibility by closed lips of bronze. She puts her hand on my shoulder when she stands, and we follow Petrus out the door—he's in quite the hurry to go; the Way of the White being as popular as it is, there are a few more corners of Lordran left for him to conscript.

Ornstein and Smough are gone when we come out. In their place are two of the giant sentinels, still as ever. I should have guessed that Gwynevere would send her best men—no doubt the Dragonslayer will be running this slaughterhouse.

The Darkling and I walk out of the palace and back to the Anor Londo bonfire, back across the bridge and to the ancient corkscrew lift with the sun giving a glare to every surface that we pass. It's never night in Anor Londo.

Wordlessly, the Darkling and I kneel by her bonfire to refill our flasks. She waits for me to finish before we warp away with bones from Firelink. I want to ask her if it hurts to leave her fire, or to have us draw from it. Somehow her silence doesn't seem inviting.

My thoughts stretch on through the short time it takes to transport to Firelink, as if I'd walked the distance anyways. I turn over all that's happened today again and again, coming back to the same places every time: I thought that the curse of Undead had ended the old world. No more pushing territories against the other states, no skirmishes, no armies. Just a steady march into the Abyss, sinner by sinner, sprite by sprite, mark by mark, until the world ends.

Oscar was supposed to change all of that. Set things back to the way they were, or make it even better. That's what they said, at least. But he didn't change anything. And I guess I didn't either. On the elevator ride to the Parish, the Lady of the Darkling asks me if I'm talking to myself. I tell her that I'm not.

We see them when the lift clanks to a halt. They marched in files to the Parish, assembling themselves in little miniature columns before the shrines. Some of them sit straight backed in the pews, some lean against the walls, others converse in dark corners. I can't tell the difference between the Way of the White and the Princess's Guard; their faces are all the same holy stone, their armor all patchworks approximating clerical filigree or knightly attitudes. These days it's best to dress in imitation of whatever Covenant you're in—you never know who might be watching. These are the Undead that joined the Covenants later out of faith or necessity. We're the ones that weren't strong enough to go it alone.

The _real_ clerics, Vince and Nico among them, are far fewer. They stand apart from the rest, watching those that surround them with obvious suspicion. I don't see Petrus and of course Rhea is nowhere in sight.

I watch the Darkling. When we come up the elevator, a dozen figures in silver knight's armor slip from the shadows and march over to us. Some of my 'brothers.' And it looks like they're dressed for war. They salute the Darkling with drawn swords and she salutes them back, and none of them even spare a nod for me.

"Hello to you, too," I say.

My words break the half-silence of the chapel. A few heads in the pews turn to stare dully at me. Before the Darkling can tell me to shut up, someone else decides to grace us with his oversized voice.

"That the Astorian and his sour bitch again?"

I silence a groan as Ornstein's arch baritone cuts Smough's giggling off. "Hold your tongue, fat one. This is a holy place."

"It's almost lunch time, Ornstein. I'm hungry."

A stirring runs through the occupants of the church, a ripple of cloth and chinking chain mail. They know the stories.

I look at the Darkling. "Smough's needs to eat? It must be Tuesday."

She actually laughs, if only once or twice. I wonder when the last time was that someone laughed in this house.

I round the corner to see the Executioner squatting at the altar before us all like he's about to lay a golden egg. It's the only way he'll fit into the church. Ornstein, an easier fit, stands with his hands clasped in front of him and his spear in the crook of his elbow as before. He looks up as me and the Darkling come before him.

"Ah, my lady. It seems the last of us have finally arrived." He doesn't even seem to notice my presence—I suppose that's an improvement. "Come, join us in a prayer before we march to battle."

She nods and takes a place by the golden monsters, motioning me to follow suit. I stand as far away from those two as I can and take one last look at the Parish as I pretend to bow my head in prayer. There are maybe three dozen of us, with more in the doorways looking in.

When was the last time I saw this many people in one place, Undead or no? It should feel good.

Yet a sort of revulsion for Lordran wells up in me, brought out by the feeling of belonging to this new army, this spearhead; you don't realize how lonely the Land of the Giants is until you see one of its emptiest corners filled with people, all witnesses to what they're about to do. But the truth is that more often than not, men die alone, and their killers go unpunished. There are a lot of names missing from the book of the guilty. And the people responsible for what's about to happen tonight will never be put there, no matter how much they might deserve it.

The butt of Ornstein's spear slams into the brickwork with a hollow clunk. He straightens up with a swagger, golden cuirass glimmering in the candlelight. When he speaks his voice is full and clear.

"Children of Gwyn. As we walk into the fire this night, think on your brothers and sisters who have fallen to the shadowed blades of the scavengers. Think on the sin of the Forest Hunters, and on the foul bartering of their lords; the prized possessions, the beloved memories of your brothers and sisters, traded from paw to grubby paw like rubbish. Your…" I can hear the faint sneer in his voice "lives, the lives of your friends, they are dependent on the icons of hope that the Hunters would steal so brazenly." He raises a hand, open, as if to silence the crowd that hasn't dared to speak. "But fear not: there is still law in Lordran, and these transgressions cannot be bought out. Tonight, you are the brand of justice."

I think on how many of the people in this room have murdered to save their humanity, their own sanity.

"Look at the brothers and sisters by your side, look at them. We are all of like mind here. We are the hope of Lordran, like those who came before us. We are the fire that will bring light to the darkness, as our fallen brothers once did, as the Chosen Undead once did."

I swear there's laughter in his voice. I look to the Darkling to see if she hears it too, but she seems wrapped up in the speech. I can feel dozens of pairs of eyes on me. How many of them know who I am?

Ornstein says, "Many have fallen, and many more shall before the night is out. For sacrifice is the nature of fire. Burns are the only reward of the sun. And not even when we have spent our whole spirits for its purpose will the fire cease to live, will it cease to light and warm this world. Have faith."

I tell myself that I am not going hollow.

Ornstein raises his spear. It's long enough to carry a war banner—there are three stripes of white cloth on its haft, all tied individually, most likely meant to signify our Covenants. They hang long and limp in the dim light of the chapel.

I realize for the first time since I left the Princess's chambers that this is really happening. The world has been rolled backwards to the wars of the Covenants in the course of a day. Did I ever really escape Lautrec's nightmare?

They hit us before the Gate of Artorias.

We're spread out against a cliff side when the wall of earth to our right explodes in a storm of hissing vines and screaming branches that slams into the file of would-be clerics to carry at least a half-dozen of them over the edge. They don't even have time to scream. The living plants of the Darkroot Forest were lying in wait for us.

One of the devils comes for me too. I drop my weight, letting the ball of vines and branches roll right over me. The thing's got to be less than a fourth of my size. It scrabbles across my back like an angry cat and joins its friends off the side of the cliff.

Two of the living bushes have tangled Ornstein around his waist, their coils pulling uselessly as they scramble towards the edge. Like he's swatting flies, the Dragonslayer slams the blunt end of his spear through one and then skewers the other, splitting them apart in clouds of moss and bark. A few yards away I see Vince pull one of the things off of Nico's back and throw it to the ground, both of them setting their weapons to it. I see the Lady of the Darkling effortlessly sidestep and bisect the bushman that comes for her. She turns and points to Smough, who's bearing about a half dozen of the things on his massive back like flies on the ass of a golden cow. The other Darkmoon Blades draw their bows and let loose a volley of glowing arrows that wash the living trees away. Smough straightens up with nothing more than scratches and gives them a wave; not a single one of their arrowheads could pierce that giant's armor.

"Report." Ornstein buffs a smudge of dirt off his shoulder guard. He doesn't even look over the edge of the cliff.

The Lady of the Darkling glances around at us, all straggled and recovering, giving me the slightest nod. "They took a half dozen over the edge. No doubt they hope we'll stop to try and recover the fallen."

"Nothing stops us tonight." Ornstein marches on ahead as if nothing's happened. His spear thumps the earth like a war drum. "We will burn this forest to the ground."

The Darkling falls in behind him without another word. Smough waddles after them, and soon the whole force falls into step again. I bring up the rear.

We just lost six men. We haven't even gotten to the Garden.

The entrance looms just ahead, a high and narrow double door of engraved stone with a small hole for the seal. The Lady of the Darkling reaches into a pouch in her belt and pulls out a hand sized disk, which she fits into the slot. I reach her just as the door cracks open.

She looks over at me. "Watch your back. If Shiva's there, don't try to take him down alone."

Ornstein shoulders between us before I can answer, before I can tell her not to die. "Come, Smough. Widen the passage for the rest of the faithful." Smough belches an affirmative.

I follow Ornstein and the Darkling through the gate and down the steps, my teeth clenched. With a crashing from behind us, dust and chunks of rock dance down the stairs and splash into the pools of moonlit water at our feet: the consequence of Smough's bulk squeezing through the gate.

Like a wall of black static, the Darkroot Garden looms from the mist before us.

But standing there I see that it's not all dark. There are a few blue tinged rays of sunlight dancing through the trees. In the space between the canopy and the earth wall behind us, I think I see the sky lightening in preparation for the dawn.

The Lady of the Darkling raps me on the arm. "Solaire."

Looking over, I grin at her. "I thought the sun would never rise."

"It's not the sun."

I catch a glimpse of a sword, a bow, the glitter of metal beneath the ghostly sheen of a phantom. Ghosts the color of a pre-dawn sky dart between the trees, their numbers so thick that they seem to override the shadows themselves. Forest Hunters—there could be three, four dozen, flitting from tree to tree. They've come in response to our invasion, rising out of the mossy and root-veined earth like will of the wood itself. Is there one for each of us? A blade and an arrow for every name—for those of us who remember our names.

I can feel the pressure of the followers of Gwyn and Gwynevere and Gwyndolin at my back; they're a wall of faith pushing to enter Lordran's favorite hunting ground. Ornstein and Smough stand in the middle of our line like living figureheads, watching, waiting for some cue I can't fathom. There is nowhere left to run to.

The Dragonslayer's voice carries through the woods. "I've seen few such dens of sin in my life. Purging this place will be an honor to the grave of Artorias."

The words catch me off guard. Shiva mentioned something about a grave, about a Knight.

The yowl of Great Cat Alvina, the mistress of the Forest Hunters, echoes from somewhere behind the wall of mist and darting hunter-shapes.

"Grrreat servants of Gwyn." I see something white and huge lurch from the top of a tree with impossible lightness. "Turrrn back. Dissscarrrd yourrr fanciful notions. Turn back, rrreturn to the stone world, and you will not be hounded.

Ornstein points his spear into the night to track something that I can't see. "These are the lies that I would expect from a servant of the Abyss."

The word weaves its way through the swaying branches like some invisible serpent, echoed by the empty, far away voices of the phantoms that seem to ooze from everywhere. The great cat's yowl joins in the chorus.

Abyss.

They called him Artorias the Abysswalker.

Ornstein half turns to us, his golden helm cocked humorlessly, his red hair draped like a mantle of blood. "Vereor nox," he says.

Smough the golden butcher starts to laugh.


	5. 5 of 7: Hunters

The footsteps of Executioner Smough bend the trees like wheat in the wind, and his hammer loosens the axis of the world. With every unseen quake we stop, all of us, to gather our balance, to lose the numbness in our fingers and toes before we turn and crash together again. The earth doesn't break for us. It drinks our blood.

At some point I stop thinking.

A shadow made of azurite explodes from the bushes with a flashing scimitar in its hand. I cleave the Forest Hunter phantom in half with my broad sword, gouts of blue light spraying from its guts and out its mouth as the substitute for a scream that never comes. It's faded into nothing before I even move away.

Beside me, a white flash snatches one of the silver armored Darkmoon Blades up into the trees without a sound. A second later a bloody helmet bounces down from branch to branch to land between my feet. The remaining three Blades that I followed into the forest close their ranks as if nothing has happened. The Darkling isn't here. I don't know where she went. I don't know how I lost her.

"By the Abyss…" It's one of the clerics of the Way of the White, a swarthy man in leather armor, his eyes permanently sunken.

I raise my sword. "Stay behind me."

The canopy of leaves above us rustles again. My would-be brothers draw their bows in unison and reply with a volley of arrows, but whatever it was is long gone. Then a half tangible figure in brown robes peels itself off of a nearby trunk and swings a mace into my eyes. I duck under the blow and smash the pommel of my sword into the side of the figure's head. Stumbling, his skull cracks against the nearest trunk. I keep up the blows until he crumples with a foggy red mush between the shoulders.

Shouts of surprise come from behind me, accompanied by the hissing of topsoil turned into the air and the screech of twisted metal. I don't have time to check before something heavy falls onto my back. My lifted intersects a hand with a dagger aiming to swipe across my throat. Then I heave the attacker over my shoulder and see a slender figure in rat eaten leather. As soon as they're on the ground I stomp on their chest and impale the thrashing body with my blade.

When I turn, there's no trace of my companions. They must be scattered or dead and swallowed up by the leaves of the forest floor; there's a long trio of deep green slashes on one of the saplings, like some sort of signature. Another scream ends abruptly a dozen yards to my left, and Alvina's terrible yowl rises through the mist around me, rising above the muffled din of clashing swords and the ever present thunder of the Executioner.

Footsteps dash leaves behind me. I roll to the right just as a five foot long blade cleavespast, slamming into the earth in a cloud of sparks and mud. Oscar of Astora pulls his sword from the ground and charges me.

Only it's not him. It couldn't be him. Just a Hunter in knight's armor, in a green hauberk, that flicks a clod of dirt into my face with the flat of his sword. I bring up my shield just in time to block the spray, then throw my body to the side to avoid the pillar of whirring steel that would have split the top of my head open. The man seems to have endless energy; in seconds he comes at me in a full charge, the claymore rising back up to impale. I manage to catch it with my shield and he rebounds, almost knocking me over with the force. Then something slams into the side of my head.

I feel a nick on the back of my neck. An arrow? My body still moves when I tell it to, so I step forwards and smash the side of my shield into the pointed visor of the knight, crumpling the front of his helmet. He swings out wildly and I knock the blade aside with my shield again, then chop like a butcher for the side of his head. The snapping of his tendons reverberates up my arm. I bowl into the knight, knocking him to the ground, and chop again. I don't have time to see if he's dead; some basic instinct sets off an alarm and I whirl, bringing my shield up again. An arrow explodes against it, making me stumble over the knight's claymore, slashing the blood in its fuller over my boots. The knight himself is twitching and blinded by his mangled helmet. One side of his body is limp and growing redder every second.

Oscar wouldn't have let me off that easy. Not after what I've done.

I keep my shield up and kneel on his throat. Fists beat against my thigh. The first few blows leave welts, then only bruises, then nothing. My knee touches bone.

From behind my shield I can see the wall of fog of sliding in far too thick and fast to be natural. I reach up and feel the broken shaft of an arrow protruding from a dimple in my bucket helm—that was what nicked me. At least the archer can't see me anymore, wherever they were.

Then the lightning hits.

The flash is carried to my eyes by the water in the air, and then a roar louder than a dragon's splits my ears and leaves my helmet vibrating. Through the cracks in the forest canopy I can see a plume of earth and ignited foliage erupt past the moon. The impact was about fifty feet away.

It takes a minute to get my feet under me. No more explosions hit. The force of the blast seems to have knocked the magic fog away, thinning it from soup to mist in an instant. It must have been Ornstein's work; there aren't many who could throw a miracle of that magnitude. I couldn't have managed it even in my prime.

Then comes a different kind of roar from not too far away. I spot the culprit through the trees—a flickering beast unfurling, thrashing, squeezing its way into existence with blinding intensity. The fire is strange: more gold than red. I'd bet my souls there's faith powering that inferno. Son of a bitch.

Ornstein's going to burn us all alive. He said as much himself.

There comes a scream from beyond the nascent fire followed by the jangling of soul magic. Probably one of the Hunters doing that; most clerics won't touch the stuff. I raise my shield and scan what spots of light I can make out through the trees for my archer friend, but they're nowhere in sight. Could have been Pharis, though I doubt she would miss. I back away into the thicker trees just in case. It would be hard for even her to get a shot at me in these trees.

It seems like the battle has passed me by—that's a familiar feeling all right—probably in the direction of that fire and that thunder crash.

I stare around at the Garden. It's churning and branch choked, tangled with bushes and vines. Which way is out?

They were right. I am a coward.

I'll be easy pickings if I run off into the night looking for the Darkroot gate. Better to find the rest of the Blades. Safety in numbers. I wonder if any of them are even still alive. Is the Lady of the Darkling?

She wasted her humanity on me.

The night bears down. I hear no more screams, no more clashes, no more. Only the distant crackle of the fire rising like a water level, pushing smoke up trunks and through branches until half the sky is churning black and gray, the rays from an unseen moon choked into needles of white. I could be the only one of Gwynevere's army left, for all I know.

I realize that I haven't moved at all since I stood up. Stopping is too easy.

I start to walk without direction. Then I stop, turn, head towards where the lightning came from. Where the crashing footfalls of Smough were a few moments ago. If anyone of us is still alive it would be those bastards. Maybe the Darkling's with them. I've got to find their trail.

Things get worse.

As I get closer I find something on the ground. A lump of brown fabric and bloated red flesh spread out far too wide and far too flat, curled around a smoking black hole that still buzzes with an electric hum. I don't know who this was, but they aren't anymore. I find more like it up ahead.

A large man in the armor of an elite cleric drags a long axe behind him with his remaining arm. The whole left side of his upper body is simply gone—what remains is great scab of flesh and bone that glows with the faint residual blue of soul sorcery. As I edge around in front of him he stumbles, straightens, hefting the long axe in one hand in a pathetic attempt to arm himself. His head leans oddly from the missing muscles. I can see tears dripping off the side of his cheek.

The man speaks like his tongue's been swollen. "Nico? Have you seen Nico?"

I recognize him as one of Rhea's bodyguards. I can't remember his name. But I can still smell his humanity. He stumbles on when I don't answer, but I fall into step beside him as he follows the path of horror that Smough and Ornstein have carved into the Darkroot Garden.

I pick my boot over the silver armor of a Blade of the Darkmoon who's lying in a heap with a black arrow buried in the front of their visor. The canopy is smoldering above us, slow and steaming through the mist. The air stings my nostrils, though I can barely smell a thing. Motes of crimson writhe from the shadows around us; the burning leaves give a hundred red eyes to the surface of every plate of bloodied armor, every twitching gauntleted fist, every cracked and discarded helmet.

"W-where is Lady R-rhea?" whispers the dead man walking beside me. "It's so dark…this tomb is no place for a maiden."

"Keep walking." I push him ahead of me. My sword quakes in my fist, and I can feel ice standing on my brow despite the heat rising around us. Steel is clashing again somewhere off to my right, and a woman's scream, and something shakes the earth in silence to shift the dirt beneath our boots. I watch the trees.

The cleric's hand clings to my shoulder. "I can't…I don't want to be…"

I shrug him off. "Don't rest. Don't close your eyes. Just keeping going."

He starts to fall behind. The trees thin—the trail of carnage is leading me out, towards the cliffs that overlook the river to the Darkroot Basin. Why did Smough and Ornstein go this way? I look back over my shoulder. The cleric is gone. Maybe he drifted into the fire. Maybe he disappeared into the earth. I could backtrack and collect his humanity.

I am a knight.

I break out and the cliff's edge rises before me. It stretches on to both sides. Behind me, the fire doesn't seem to have quite reached the outermost trees yet. Neither has the fighting. Through the mist I can see a lopsided but angular shape near the lip. It's a ruined bridge tower—or it was, before someone decided to finish the job. I have to pick past scattered bricks on my way through. Looking down, I spot yellowish flakes of metal on a few. This was Smough's work.

I thread through the rubble until I come to a moss patched bridge of stone. There, the peace of the place strikes me down.

The moon has wicked through the clouds and frozen the world in winter light. This far out of the Garden I can hear a rumbling river below the bridge, and see flecks of glowing foam leap over the railings like spots of ash from a fire. The rush of the water drowns out the flames that chased me here.

Froom the mist across the bridge, an uncomfortable popping reverberates through the air. The sound hurts my ears and makes me bite my tongue, and the earth shaking thump that comes after puts my sword in my hand before I can even think. It sounds like Smough is breaking something again.

I take the bridge. There are fresh scrapes in the stone and a dozen holes punched out of random points on the guard rail, no doubt to make way for the royal guards. It must have taken Smough minutes to make it all the way across.

Before I hear them, I see them: two golden monsters clambering in eerie silence over what looks like the remains of a stone archway and its gate. Judging from the size of the walls to either side, it's a fair bet that the gate must have been taller than either of them. Before they knocked it all down, of course.

The royal guards are almost out of my sight, again. I speed up, slipping over slick stones and the waterlogged scalps of moss that litter the bridge. My shock has finally caught up to what I'm seeing: they're heading out of the forest. They're leaving us to die. Where's the Lady of the Darkling?

I cry out wordlessly and sprint the rest of the way.

Ornstein hears me coming. He stops, just past the walls, standing at the threshold of whatever clearing they've beaten their way into. Smough turns with him. The Executioner's hammer is a red carcass, and blood cakes the great globe-belly of his armor. Ornstein is immaculate; only the end of his spear is tinged dark red, neat little drops plinking off its edge from one moment to the next.

My voice is thick and ragged in the humid air, above the crashing of the river below. "Come back you bastards! Where in the Abyss are you going!"

The Dragonslayer doesn't seem happy to see me. He behind me, back at the Garden. "Go back and do your duty."

I skid to a halt not twenty feet away. "I had to wade through a trail of hollowed men just to follow you, and you're going to abandon the rest? Where's the Lady of the Darkling?" I wrack my brains for anything I might have seen of her. In my mind's eye I go over every corpse one by one.

"She knows our mission," says Ornstein.

"What in the Abyss are you on about?" I advance on them, not sheathing my sword. "This is supposed to be _your_ war! COWARD!"

The Dragonslayer stiffens. He points his finger at me, sharper than the tip of the spear. "I am _no _coward." And then he turns on his heel and marches away. Beyond him I can see some sort of structure in a clearing and what looks like hundreds of sticks planted around it. Smough shrugs at me and follows, lumbering over the earth like a bloody pillar.

"Come back here, you son of a bitch!" I clamber over the wreck of the gate after them, cursing under my breath, holding my sword above my head. Then I'm in the clearing.

It doesn't take long for me to understand where we are.

The sticks that I saw are swords, and they're clustered like weeds around a grave bigger than any I've ever seen. And leaning against that monolith is a black sword larger than a man. The great sword is so long that it could have been what planted all the other blades that have sprouted from the dirt, just like the huge stone it rests against could have seeded the other graves that litter this clearing.

I have been to holy places before. The Sunlight Alter in the Undead Burg, the Temple of the Darkmoon in Anor Londo, the Chapel in the Parish; those are places where men and women go to pay tribute with their prayers.

But this is a place where men and women ground their swords and never take them up again. This is a place where we dig our own graves and then lie in the dirt, where we pay tribute with our lives.

The need to kneel is like a palpable hand pushing on my shoulders. It's a struggle to even dare to speak."I know what this is…"

Ornstein doesn't answer. He has already knelt, leaving his spear planted to lean against the monolith, looking strangely complementary to the great sword. With both hands he removes a blood stained cloth from some pocket in his belt and begins to rub away what must be decades of dirt from the front of the memorial. There's something written there.

I can feel eyes boring into the back of my head. I turn, scanning the graveyard for any Forest Hunters that might have followed us. The earth rises up in natural walls to turn the clearing into a sort of pit, while a waterfall feeds a stream that runs around the clearing in an almost perfect circle. My ears should be full of the echo of splashing water, of the buzzing of the ice-blue fireflies that hover up from behind the graves and dart through the low forest of swords.

Yet I hear nothing. The bridge was quiet, peaceful. This place is silent in a different way.

Even Smough can feel it; he shifts from foot to foot, making every sword save the largest one quiver like trembling flower stalks. We shouldn't be here.

Ornstein stands and takes a few steps back from the towering plaque. He cocks his head, as if just hearing me. "What did you say?" The mildness in his voice is astonishing.

"This is the grave of the Abysswalker. Isn't it?"

"I am surprised that you know."

I suppose it's better than a death threat.

My eyes are drawn to that massive blade leaning against the stone. A human couldn't even heft it, much less carry it into battle. "The undead have their legends. They said Artorias died somewhere beyond Anor Londo. I just never guessed it would be in the middle of the Darkroot." I step towards the great stone to get a closer look at the inscription. "In the middle of the Forest Hunters…"

"He fell hundred years ago," comes Ornstein's voice, trailing around to my right. "I doubt even Great Cat Alvina remembers who lies here."

I can't even understand the language on the plaque. "What about you? They say he was one of the Four Knights of Gwyn, too." I look back over at my shoulder at Ornstein, who is walking in a slow circle around the monolith. Seems like he's searching—for what, I don't know. Smough leans against the handle of his hammer impatiently. I need whatever this is done quickly, too, but something about this place makes me want to tread cautiously.

"I was his captain," says Ornstein suddenly. "Though they called him the best of the Knights of Gwyn."

I watch the Dragonslayer. I like this new mood even less than the old one. "And was he?"

Ornstein looks right at me.

"He was a fool."

In the silence that follows I hear something off in the trees, beyond the waterfall and the stream: a subdued but heavy thrashing, as if two giants were wrestling through the underbrush. Was that a hiss, like the great cat's? No one else seems to notice.

Smough shifts, his fat golden feet scuffing the ground like a bull's. "Yeah, yeah, greatest knight and all. And he was the first one to fall, wasn't he?"

Ornstein snaps at him. "Better to live and die as a knight than as a cur."

The backs of my hands itching, I've followed him around the stone. The feeling of eyes on my back is growing stronger. "So you came here to pay your respects. There wasn't a better time for this."

"There could be no better time than this." He kneels by something, a shape wedged in the shadow of Artorias's memorial. I follow his gaze.

Sitting by the grave is a corpse so old it could be the Abysswalker himself. Whatever clothing it was wearing has dissolved, whatever armor it had has rusted and fallen to red egg shells in its rib cage. It's hunched over with its hands clasped in its lap, as if whoever this was simply lay down to sleep and never woke up. Ornstein reaches down and cups the skull by the chin, tilting it up to us. What rises is unnatural: a china mask with the expressionless abstract of a face painted around two inhuman, yellow eyes.

I bite back a gasp. "Abyss!"

Ornstein laughs softly. The eyes are also painted, I can see. "Yes, she was quite a fearsome sight in life, for such a small creature. This was another of my comrades from the time before your kind came. The last time I saw her, she was just like this…" his hand pulls back and lets the skull down.

There's a dry snapping sound as head pops off its spine and tumbles, smashing the hands in the obscenely fleshless lap into a pile of finger bones. The eerie mask cracks instantly and sprays porcelain powder across the ground.

I feel bile rising in my gut. Ornstein reaches down, hesitant, and then picks the pieces of the mask up in his hands. For a moment he looks like he's going to try to fit the dust back together.

Smough chuckles deep and throaty behind us. Is that his voice making the ground tremble? The bloody giant is leaning against the grave of Artorias like it was a table at a bar, his hammer's handle resting against his thigh. The moon makes his shadow stretch out for seeming miles, staining the graveyard like a streak of tar.

"What're you doing, wasting time with some old hag's bones, you old bleeding heart? Find the Abysswalker's Ring and let's get back to the fighting."

I don't have time to ask what's going on, because in the next moment the fragments of the dead woman's mask explode in Ornstein's fists. "You fat smear of _basilisk shit_. Do not _presume _to trample on the names of the dead in _my _presence."

I stand up and stumble out from between them as quickly as I can. I may not be the greatest at catching sinners, but I know murder when I hear it in a man's voice.

Smough leans down towards the Dragonslayer, his baby-faced helm looming out of the night like some foul, pouting demon. "An' why shouldn't I? Those fools spent so much time mooning over each other it's a wonder they didn't walk right into a dragon's mouth!"

Ornstein stands up. He stalks towards Smough, fingers jabbing forwards to punctuate every word, his great spear forgotten against the monolith. "_Fool._ You would dare sling such outrages in my presence? You, not even a knight, but a disgusting pig, a bloated degenerate who all of Lordran looks on with distain? _YOU _would _MOCK _the _BLADE OF THE LORD_?"

The Dragonslayer's shout is louder than lightning, but Smough's laugh is deeper than an ocean. "Bah. Don't you pull the self-righteous card again. You've got a fat lot of nerve to call yourself a Gods damn knight after what you did to get us here today!"

Sparks fly from Ornstein's finger, leaping between him and Smough. "IDIOT! I would have more faith in my heart after A THOUSAND SINS than you do after breakfast!"

Smough takes a step back, his hammer sliding half off his shoulder. "You're always talkin' like you're so Gods damn pure, always judgin' me like you're so much _better. _I'm sick of it! I shoudda been one of the Four!"

"_Never._"

I back as far away as I can from them, towards the cover of the monolith and where that body was. I'm closer than I realize: a fleshless leg jams my foot and I fall backwards next to the bones. The breath puffs out of my chest and I double over, only something glimmers from the corner of my eye.

Wheezing, I reach out and pluck the dark green ring from the pile of the dead woman's finger bones. It's ice cold, so cold it bites into my flesh, and it's strangely heavy in my palm. Even when I close my fingers I can see the tiny stone it bears. A black stone, as smooth as the night. Could it be this 'Abysswalker's Ring' that Smough was so impatient about? I try to replay the Executioner's words in my head, but the sheer volume of the shouting match going in front of me makes it almost impossible to focus.

Smough's voice is rising in pitch, like a plaintive child. "Yeah? Well maybe if you all hadn't turned your noses up at me, maybe they'd still be alive! You were such great bloody heroes! And look where it got ya, eh? That big oaf died a blind old fool, the girl wasted from grief like an idiot—and your _honorable_, _knightly _friend was a traitor!"

Ornstein could be Gwyn himself for all the difference their height seems to make. His voice is soft, yet more bilious than anything I've ever heard. "You know _nothing_ of such things. _Nothing _of what they did, _nothing _of who they were. And in their shadow you are and will always be _nothing._"

Smough hefts his hammer—his hands are trembling—and he spreads his enormous legs and holds the oversized mallet out like a shield in front of him. "That right? You know, I used to look up to you, Ornstein. I ate up all the bull ya' dished out to me. But for all that gold, the truth is, you're nothin' but a common assassin. A backstabber. It's _me _that's better than _you. _And I'm damn sure better than some old fuckin' corpse and his bone-bride!"

And then he moves, hammer rising, falling towards _me. _I shout and dive of the way, the golden mallet flashing in the moonlight, coming down like a falling sun right on top of the Grave of Artorias the Abysswalker.

The sound it makes is the bones of Lordran shattering. The Executioner's hammer looks like it has embedded itself in the stone for a second, before Smough pulls it away with a satisfied grunt, a tiny puff of dust spraying into the air. In moments I see a line of yellow-white snake down the center of the grave, all the way to the dirt. Then roughly a half of the enormous stone simply peels itself off and slams, shatters, against the earth, crushing beneath it a hundred rusty blades and both the spear of the Dragonslayer and the sword of the Abysswalker at the same time.

For a single agonizing moment we stand transfixed by the ruin.

Then, from every direction, from every shaking earthen wall, vibrating grave, and rattling sword, a howl unlike anything I have ever heard rises into the night sky. For a moment I think it's going to shake the moon apart; the cry is too long and too deep for even a hundred wolves to muster. Only a monster could make a sound like this.

Hands outstretched towards the broken grave, Ornstein is frozen like a statue. Smough turns in a circle, his spiked shoulders rising and falling, his impish helmet cocked to the side.

"What's that?"

From the corner of my eye, I see what looks like a summer cloud burst silently from the trees and drop down into the clearing. Before I can even turn the thing has flashed between me and Smough. A wrenching sound rings in my helmet as the living snowstorm leaps impossibly high through the air and becomes a gigantic animal: a wolf, which skids all the way across the clearing and into the stream on the far side, raising four sprays of water around paws the size of shields. I look closer.

There's something in its jaws. A golden helmet.

No—it's his head.

It's the head of Executioner Smough.

A never ending fountain of black rain falls on my head. It splatters hotly across my faceplate, my chest, though I can barely feel it. I taste copper.

Smough's falls. I always imagined that he would crack the earth open when he died, but it's not like that at all. Instead the body seems to move on its own with comic impetus, its bloated mass rolling towards me like a barrel to present the spouting mouth where his head used to be. The macabre ball settles in front of me with a horrid expulsion—the smell of death, the stench of blood, a splattering on my boots—one final belch into the world. I have to wipe my visor clean with my fingers to make sure what I'm looking at is real.

Then a hammerhead the size of a coffin slams into the ground two feet away and almost smashes me flat.

From behind me comes another wail, this one much smaller than the wolf's. Like a man looking into bottomless hole in the world.

It's Ornstein.

"S-Smough?"

It's surreal to watch the Dragonslayer have to circle all the way around the body just to get a look at the place where the giant's head used to be. Smough must have crushed a hundred gravestones and swords when he fell. His final insult to the dead, I suppose.

"Get up. You overgrown pig. Get up…"

When Ornstein he makes another sound. Much smaller this time.

"…oh…"

He staggers drunkenly past me to lay his hands on the enormous golden belly like it's the most sacred alter in the world. His head bows forwards, and I catch the strains of his prayer, whatever it is. I force myself to look away.

The great wolf is pacing in the stream. Where did that thing come from? Didn't Shiva say something about a dog, back in the Valley of the Drakes?

"_There's nothing there of value to anyone. Is there?"_

I look at the strange, cold ring still clutched in my hand. Then I slip it onto my finger. A hiss from the direction of the wolf makes me look up again.

Now there are two beasts stalking through the graves. The wolf's jaws are empty but caked with pink, and it growls fiercely across at the wide, nimble form of a great white cat. Alvina. Between us and the wolf, she's pacing back and forth, matching its every maneuver, calling out to it in her strange speech.

"The large one's blasphemy is paid forrr. Do not turrrn on the old captain as well. You would harm one of the last who remembers your masterrr. Your mind cannot be that far gone."

The wolf throws back its head and howls again, the sound full of fury and grief. Its eyes are like glittering moonstones.

In the adrenaline, my own eyes pick out details. Shallow but bloody claw marks through Alvina's fur. Red smeared across the great wolf's paws even as it stalks through the stream—tiny brambles, branches tangled in their white fur. And her words…

This animal was the Abysswalker's—maybe Alvina was, too. They're guards. And it looks like they've been having an argument, too.

Armor clinks off to my left as Ornstein straightens and stalks around Smough towards the beasts, his golden boots splashing through the pool of blood, his lion's helm held high.

"Sif," he says, and his voice is almost tender. "I thought you would have died long ago."

The white wolf's tail rises and its ears perk up, and for a moment it seems like it's about to drop its furious stance.

Then Ornstein clasps his hands and slowly draws them apart. The smell of ozone fills the air and my teeth begin to rattle. A crackling haft of light simply appears between the Dragonslayer's palms, lengthening and thickening and brightening the further apart he draws them. I can hear his voice, still calm over the sizzle of the lightning miracle. "But may Artorias forgive me, I'm going to put you down."

Alvina hisses in surprise and outrage as the wolf lunges forwards and bats her aside with a single giant paw. The cat shoots off in a ball of white and tumbles through the forest of swords, thrashing and yowling furiously. The ground begins to shift under my feet from the staccato pounding of enormous paws as the wolf picks up momentum by winding around after its lunge. It crashes through the water fall and comes around, swarms of droplets flying from its fur, pink saliva flying from its mouth, gleaming white eyes hurtling towards us. On the edge of perception I can hear a small whining sound. A never ending keen.

A lightning bolt explodes into the side of its snowy pelt and sends the beast crashing to the ground. The light blinds me for an instant, and I'm left with the after image of Ornstein hurtling across the clearing, red hair streaming out behind him, another spear of gold couched under his arm.

Time freezes. In an instant I see the wound his weapon left in great wolf's hide, a mark highlighted by a halo of burning fur. A red eye with puckered black edges. Angry folds of red.

And like shutters flicking on and off I see the bodies of the Forest Hunters in the Garden side by side with the bodies of the Princess Guards that I saw in the Parish this morning. The bodies, crushed and blackened, and Lautrec is among them, four arms cradling in crater in his chest, his form strangely compressed and crumpled.

I glance to where Ornstein's spear is hidden under a mountain of rubble. Only a weapon of that size could explain the deformation of the bodies. As the enchantment…it's not exactly a common power in Lordran nowadays. And it had been so long since I saw it used, since I used it myself a decade ago.

Maybe I didn't want to see. Maybe I made myself forget.

I should have recognized the burns of the sunlight miracle.

The Parish murderer and the wolf meet directly in front of me. The impact of the clash is enough to stagger me and snap a dozen of the grounded swords around us at their middles.

A lightning bolt rewinds into the sky and Ornstein lets out a scream of agony, because the great wolf has got him by the arm, its adamant teeth sinking through his gilded armor like butter. The Dragonslayer shudders and gasps, hunched and straining against the larger creature, trying to pull himself away from the grip. The bones in his arms crack louder and harder than a human's would. But they do. The wolf starts to thrash its body back and forth in clouds of dirt and broken blades, pulling harder and harder, its movements sinewy and purposeful. Ornstein is still screaming.

I turn around and run as fast as I can.


	6. 6 of 7: Sinners

The Darkroot has gone mad.

I climbed the rubble of the lichgate and hit the bridge with a storm of howls and electricity raging at my back. In an instant, real lightning illuminates the bridge ahead of me in white relief. Beads condense before my eyes and join the dancing river foam, and something deep and furious calls from the sky. The thunder's only numb to me.

The drops are like enormous insects rattling on my helmet, too thick and too sudden to be natural. The Darkroot has always been wrong. It is one of _those _places, the places that will always be there long past your time. Places where you lose yourself.

My mind is shattered like the graveyard. Ornstein must be the killer. He has to be. The corpses he's made tonight match the ones he made this morning, don't they? And he hates the Undead, doesn't he? The pieces tumble into place: the way he looked at the Darkling, everything that Smough said, and the Abysswalker's Ring—did Ornstein orchestrate this just to get to Artorias's grave, to reclaim the ring that's on my finger now?

There are pieces missing. But if I'm right this could mean war between Gwyndolin and Gwynevere. It's funny, really. I didn't think Lordran could get any worse.

Something is waiting for me in the ruined bridge house at the end of the crossing. The fog lifts like a dream before my eyes and leaves a gleaming impression: a figure in armor, and beyond it a wall of flickering gold, smeared like lantern glass through the downpour—the Darkroot Forest has become an inferno. The figure before it stands in tarnished gold or red or yellow—I can't see his armor through the soot, but it can't be him, because Lautrec is dead. I crushed his skull into the wall even as he laughed.

It's the Lady of the Darkling.

"Announce yourself." Her voice only barely cuts through the downpour. Her estoc is smoking with blood and effulgent with a moonlight miracle, and her helmet's slatted nose is deathly pale in its light.

I skid to the end of the bridge and sag against a stone post, breath like lead. "It's me." She doesn't seem to hear. I push on into the ruin, where the water becomes a rattle on the top of my helmet and our voices can finally be heard. "It's me!"

"By the Lord, I barely recognized you." She flourishes the blade to her side, though I can hear the fatigue in her voice even through the flattening effect of the storm. There are flecks of red and brown on her greaves. "This night is a mess. I haven't seen a friendly soul since I broke through the trees. What happened to you, Solaire?"

I check to make sure the ring is still there, but my body has become a carmine horror. I can't even see the stitch lines of my sun heraldry. The tunic used to be white, but I don't think it will ever be anything again. I am wearing red gloves.

"I was…I found…" The truth sounds like madness when you give it a voice. I tell her that I followed Ornstein and Smough to Artorias, and what we found. I tell what the wolf did, and how the Dragonslayer struck back with his miracles, and I saw the burn they made. In the Parish, in the Forest. And Lautrec. I had made myself forget the last time I threw lightning. But I remember now. I remember who the guilty one is.

The Darkling hasn't said a word.

She's not contradicting me for this thing I hardly believe myself, or calling me insane, or telling me to shut up and follow orders. She's not arguing, no matter how much I want her to. She's not even moving. She's still, like a caught animal in the moment before it strikes or flees.

I have seen this look before.

"You knew," I accuse.

She doesn't bother to argue or pretend, because sinners know when we're caught. "I told you to stay with me, Solaire. I asked you to. But you had to go off again, like always. Why couldn't you just follow orders? Lords. Just this once."

I had never heard her beg before then.

"You knew," I accuse again, and it feels sharper on my tongue than a pointed finger or a drawn blade. "And you didn't stop this."

"_This_ was the whole point."

"_Why_."

"To retrieve the Covenant of Artorias, and with it to finish what the Chosen Undead started. That's what it does, Solaire—Artorias's ring; it lets you cross the dark. To face the Four Kings, and the Abyss itself. It's what Oscar would have done." The last words are a whisper.

I wish that I was hollow, that this was my nightmare. Then I would be the only one to blame.

"I wasn't asking why this happened, lady. I was asking why you let it."

She sways, then sinks into her duelist's stance again. "The Lords," she says. "Gwyndolin. Gwynevere. I couldn't defy them. I couldn't defy Lord Gwyndolin after all he's done for me." The pointed chin of her helmet rises. "And it needed to be done."

My head hurts just trying to process what I'm hearing. I stare, trying to figure out if that's her voice; maybe someone stole her armor just to punch me in the gut. "I don't believe the Lords could do this." Only that's not true. It's not them that I trusted.

"It was nothing." Her words come faster and faster. "All I did was stand watch for Ornstein." She makes a nervous motion with her free hand. "And we swore Andre to secrecy by the Princess's name, made him lie to you. We had the rest of them scared, ready to join the banners. To make them whole, because Lordran was broken." Her voice hardens. "You should know better than anyone that it needed to be done."

"And if they'd chosen me to die?"

She takes too long to answer. "It might have come to that. If you'd gotten close enough to stopping this.

I start laughing, I can't help it. All the wondering, the confusion, the desperation, that mad journey into Blighttown and the things I saw there, that damn visit to Lautrec that I never should have paid: all a waste. But it saved my life. Or what's left of it.

"Sorry you missed your chance," I say.

"Don't you dare assume what I—" The Darkling turns her head away from me like my laugh is a toxin. "I had to prepare myself for that, of course. I didn't think you could have forgotten the mark of your own miracle. By the Lords…by the Abyss, Solaire—to forget something like that…how much else have you forgotten?"

"I remember now."

"Listen, we can still—" She stops, helmet cocked. "Is that the Abysswalker's Ring on your finger?"

My teeth bend against each other. "Yes."

"I…" Her hand drifts back to her sword, bringing steel back to the equation. "I need you to surrender it to me."

"Take this one." I yank the Darkmoon Blade Covenant off my finger and throw it in her face. It bounces off the nasal of her helmet and disappears into a corner of the ruins. Her head jerks back. I grab the Darkmoon talisman to throw it too. "You can take this all the way to Anor Londo and shove it up Gwyndolin's ass."

The Darkling's hand flashes out and snatches the talisman from the air. "Fine." Her voice is iron, hard and brittle. "Run away if you want. But the Covenant of Artorias doesn't belong to you. It belongs to those who would face the Abyss."

"Last time I checked, Artorias wasn't a traitor and a murderer."

The talisman crumples in her fist. "Don't you judge me, Solaire. Not because you were some champion for the downtrodden, because you think you've done so much _more _for Lordran. You and Oscar are the ones that got us here, thinking you know _better_."

"You sound just like the Dragonslayer."

"Because he's right! You don't know how to be a knight, and you never did. All you know is to swing your sword until your _friends_ are the only left standing, and damn anyone or anything that isn't as simple as that!"

Her free hand fumbles with her helmet, pulling at straps and buckles, brass fingers jamming under its elegant rim. "Well, I'm going to show you what sacrifice is, _brother."_The helmet lifts away as easily as if it were lock of hair, and for the first time in ten years I see beneath it.

What's under the brass masterpiece has more in common with the broken mask of the woman by Artorias's grave than it does with a human face. Because the bones beneath have broken in a dozen places to let ink-black slugs of humanity writhe between them, shinning shadows beneath skin that's paper white and paper thin. With each sprite that squeezes past, the fragments of her skull rock in waves, rippling scales of flesh. No feature, skin or bone, remains long enough to be remembered, no wave in the tide of flesh ever returns quite the same. The rain drips down her cheeks. Her face is daring me to look, daring me to scream, to run. There's no shyness or shame—things like that can be beaten out of you.

"This is what it takes to keep a bonfire," she says. And she sounds so proud.

This is my chance, isn't it? While Ornstein is fighting or dying, while the raging fire separates her and me from whoever won the battle in the forest, this is my chance to pretend I never found the truth. We'll all march back to Anor Londo and I'll give the ring to Gwyndolin or Gwynevere or whoever, and there will be wordless looks and conspiratorial nods, assuming they'll let me live. And then me and the Darkling? We'll reconcile in silence like we've done so many times, and this will all pass into history. Just like Oscar. Just like Anastacia and Lautrec and Artorias and all of us poor Undead, laid down out of memory. And who will ever know who the real sinners were?

"I killed Oscar."

The look of triumph disappears from her face. "That's not funny," she snaps. The helmet slams back down, the cold furious beak snapping into place with a flash of reflected moonlight. She had green eyes.

"I'd been searching for my own sun for so long, so long that I'd take anything I could find. I found the sunlight maggot in Lost Izalith. It was chaos spawned. It was bright like the sun. I don't know if the thing drove me mad or if I already was."

"This…this isn't time for your jokes, Solaire." The Lady of the Darkling starts to back out of the ruins, almost slipping on scattered, shattered stones. I reach out to pull her back and in the next instant her sword wards against me, flashing with moonlight. "Stop talking. _Stop._"

"Oscar found me, dashed the sun onto the floor. So I turned my lightning on him—it was the brightest spear I ever made. I ran it through his chest, and I think he was further hollow than I ever realized, because he didn't get up again. So I rolled him into the river of fire. When I came back to the surface I told them he was lost to the demons. I thought I was such a clever man."

"NO!" The blade flashes in my face, nearly cuts my head off. "Stay back—just give me the ring. Give it and go! Get out of my sight!"

"I can't. I want so badly to forget, Darkling. But I can't."

"Do not call me that. Do not speak to me EVER AGAIN!" The flat of the estoc batters against my helmet, rattling my teeth, the moonlight miracle imparting an ice cold thrum to the strike. Her next blow bruises my shoulder to the bone.

I lurch forwards and grab at her wrists. I can feel the infinite humanity of a Fire Keeper burning beneath my fingers.

"C-cold!" She curses at me and tries to pull away. The pommel of her blade slams into the top of my helmet, then again into my neck. "Sun spit on you! Let go of me! May the sun burn you to ash!" Every word is punctuated by a blow. "Oath breaker!" The dents in the helmet squeeze my skull like a vice. "Liar! Murderer! Sinner!"

"Stop," comes the voice from the bridge.

In an instant, lighting takes the world and lets me see its champion; one clawed hand drags him along the railing, blood stained golden boots bearing the scuffed and muddied weight of the royal armor. The other arm has been replaced by a blackened stump—hastily cauterized by Ornstein himself, no doubt.

"Get—off—" The Darkling's knee connects to my chest. I fall backwards against a mossy, broken arch and grip my helmet to try to pry it off, to silence the echoes in my head. Lautrec of Carim is laughing.

The Darkling looks up at Ornstien with a straight back. "He knows, my Lord. He has the ring. And he—"

"I heard." Ornstein's voice is dead. In the next flash of lighting I can see a thin line of smoke rising from a lonely corner of the graveyard. "And I have had enough of this place. I am ordering a retreat."

"No." Her eyes, I can see them shinning through the visor of her helmet, they never seem to move from me. She has eyes, I know, I saw. I can still remember their color. "He murdered—he has the ring. We can win. I can take it back. "

"Then do it."

"I will," says the Darkling. But she doesn't move.

"We do not have time for a struggle. Slay him and be done with it." Ornstein walks past her as if she isn't even there. The yowl of the great cat rises into the air all around us, higher even than the howl of the wolf. I see the back of the Dragonslayer stiffen.

"What about survivors, my lord?" asks the Darkling. I can feel her eyes on me.

Ignoring her, Ornstein limps towards Garden without another word, back towards the inferno that he helped create. The rain has pushed the fire down and raised a great cloud of steam, its white billow drifting pendulously over our heads. The Darkling bows her head.

I lean against the stones and try to push myself up. Once, twice, I fall, splashing back down into the filth. My head lolls back and I catch sight of the figure in brass standing over me, her weapon shivering in her hand.

"This is your fault," she says. "You should have stayed where you fell."

Muddy water fills my mouth and the rain marches on my chest. I have fallen onto my back. The Ring of the Abysswalker is so heavy on my hand. I drag it to my breast and curl in around it, rolling onto my side.

She is leaving. I see her fall in beside the Dragonslayer, her sword raised to ward off harriers as they skirt the fire. She doesn't look back, even as their forms are blurred by the heat of the fire and swallowed by the night. Then I am alone.

I try to remember the color of her eyes.


	7. 7 of 7: Graves

They say that when you can't feel it anymore, that's when you're about to die.

Lucky for me I'm already dead.

But it's good to lie down, all the same. How long has it been since I slept between sheets? How long since I was warmed by a hearth fire, or a body beside me, or a sun on my face. How long since I could lie on my back and close my eyes, not afraid of what I might wake up as, not afraid of what I might forget.

There is someone standing over me.

"Are you dead, my friend? What am I saying—of course you are." The voice has a permanent smile behind it. "But one must ask: how dead are you?"

A gentle foot turns me onto my back—I curl the fingers of my right hand to keep the Covenant of Artorias hidden in my palm.

"Why, if it isn't Solaire the Darkmoon Blade. I hardly recognized you."

I open my eyes. For hours, from behind leaden eyelids, I've been watching the fire and the flashes dwindle away. But the weight lifted as the hours went by, and as for the Garden, the rain and storm are gone—all but the night is gone. And the moon peers balefully down.

"You should get up, Solaire. You don't want to get carried off to the pile."

I do. The Darkroot Garden is a steaming charcoal pit. Through the blackened stumps that were trees and bushes, I can see a pile of bodies—some silver armored, some in cleric's filigree, some in what looks like scavenged gear—though much of their equipment is missing, now. Hunters and holy men sharing the same dead pile, attended to by the same men and women who I fought last night. Some of them have torches.

"Reprehensible, I know." The voice circles above me. For a moment, supple leather boots cross before my eyes. "But we can't have hollows wandering around our forest. It might get dangerous."

"Leave me alone, Shiva." I sink back into the dirt.

"Very well. But do not blame me if they throw you on the fire as well."

Silence. He must be gone. I pray he is.

"Hold a moment, my friend. That's quite a ring on your finger."

Too late. I try to roll over my hand. A weight presses into the back of my wrist, more of a warning than a blow. "Oh fortune! That is some treasure that you have wrested. Are you trading for it?"

I open my eyes again. A bell-shaped helm from the east stares down at me. I catch a glimpse of Kirk's sword stowed in his belt. "It's not ours to trade, Shiva."

"And what is? Don't insult my intelligence." Light fingers catch my wrist in a somehow iron grip. "You know, if I was moments away from going hollow, I would be glad to bequeath _at least _a few of my possessions unto my friends. Ah well." His fingers pry mine apart, surprisingly strong. "This one will have to do."

I draw my knees up and kick Shiva in the ribs. His hands fly off of me. I gather my legs and rise to my feet, unsteady as can be. My vision is a tunnel, but I can see the easterner kicking up mud as he stands, shaking himself with the grace of a pure bred hound.

"Such a blow! Very good, my friend. Very impressive." He feigns a wheeze for a moment. Fingers clad in smooth grey gloves rub at the twin boot prints on his chest. "In all seriousness, I am as willing to make a deal with you as I was with Kirk."

I can feel my lips curl back in an involuntary snarl. "Shiva. You have nothing that I want."

He ignores me. "I assume you are acquainted with the latest keeper of Firelink Shrine. I noticed that her guards were among the dead, tonight. Wouldn't it be a shame if such a pure maiden were to be lost when a Knight like you could have prevented it? You are still a Knight, I presume."

I start towards him. My hand gropes for my straight sword and comes away empty—maybe he took it, maybe someone else did. I raise my fists instead. "I'm going to kill you."

Shiva's spiked helm tilts to the side. "Oh my. Between the two of you, I had thought that Kirk was the more irrational. Are you quite sure about this?"

"Hold still. Just like that." I can smell the humanity inside him.

The easterner bows. "If you insist."

There's a whirring sound to my left and something catches at my arm. Then comes a thump. I look to see my hand, severed up to the forearm, lying in the dirt. A sleeve of chainmail hangs over the stump, and the sallow fingers are twitching slowly, one by one. It's actually kind of funny.

I turn and take my shadow by the throat. A writhing ghost of dark cloth and wispy steel, Shiva's invisible bodyguard rises into the air on the end of my remaining arm. In the next moment I slam the back of their head against my knee. The breaking bones sound no worse than snapping branches. In the next second, a sword materializes in the rain-rippled dirt, still stained with my blood. I snatch it up and let my shadow fall back to the ground.

The Covenant of Artorias presses hard against the new hilt, biting back into my finger as I place my foot roughly on the center of my attacker's face and push down slowly, pushing their squirming head into the mud.

I wave the stump of my left hand to sprinkle drops of blood onto thin air. "Wrong one. Wrong. I don't know where you come from, but in Lordran all a man needs is his sword arm."

"Stop that." Shiva's hand hovers over the stolen chaos blade at his belt. "Stop what you're doing."

"Didn't catch that." I grind my boot back and forth over his silent friend's nose and listen to the squeak of tearing cartilage. "You should make a better offer."

"Please." Shiva's not smiling anymore, I can tell.

The earth rises up around my boot. "Better make it quick."

He does.

Patting a fresh pouch of green blossom, I leave Shiva of the East behind to fret over his silent friend. I totter back through the ruins and take a now much calmer bridge back to the Grave of Artorias, making full use of the rail as I go; the lost weight on my side takes a bit of getting used to. There's a handful of charcoal pine resin smeared across the stump, and it smells like burning flesh, but it'll die down in a bit. Ten years ago a wound like this would have meant the end, meant a slow death by hollowing, helpless in some dark corner of the world and waiting for someone to come finish the job. Well. Let them come. In my last hand I've got the sword of Dark Knight Kirk, so kindly traded for with Shiva. Its unnatural heat makes my whole arm itch even through the numbness. I wonder if it felt the same to them.

I come to the end. A small path has been cleared through the rubble of Artorias's lich gate. It looks like the Forest Hunters moved the smaller stones to clear a path.

The stench of burning hair greets me on the other side. Like a trail of ants, a dozen people carry slabs of gold and bloody, dripping shapes between them, threading past Artorias's grave and the new addition to this place: a hill of coal smoldering not a dozen feet from me.

A splash draws my eye away; they're taking the pieces of Smough and his armor to the encircling stream, washing them before they place them in the grave they've dug in a far corner of the clearing. The hole is wide enough for a dozen humans. I'm not sure what to call it. More of a trough, really.

I suppose there's something ironic in that man being butchered like livestock. But I'm not laughing. Neither are his attendants. There's a kind of respect in how they put him away, like workers pulling down a tower piece by piece. The Executioner's mallet has been planted handle-up at the head of his grave—not quite the sight that Artorias's sword was, but at least it's not buried under a mountain of rubble. Ornstein's spear is still trapped along with the great sword. If only that had been enough to do him in. Would anything have changed?

I've avoided looking at the corpse of the wolf for too long; now the white cat rises from behind it, and I don't have much of a choice. Like most animals in Lordran she's big enough to take a man's head off in a single bite, yet she's still a fifth of the size of the beast between us. Alvina's nose is smeared with blood and charred animal fat, and her narrow eyes gleam in silver and gold.

"Who comes?"

I lower my sword. "Solaire of…" The name floats out of my grasp. _Carim? "_My name is Solaire."

"I have heard this name." Alvina sways around the body and stops at the head. I try not to look; it's more of a skull than anything, charcoal lumps for ears and eyes and nose. What fur that's left amounts to a scattering of matchsticks, smoldering over a landscape of exposed muscle—even in death, the strength of the beast is as stunning as its size.

"What was it called?" I ask. Ornstein said its name once, but I don't remember.

"His name was Sif." The cat dips her head and laps dried blood from the muzzle. It's a futile task.

I've heard the name in legends, like so many other names. I avert my eyes. "I'm here to return Artorias's ring."

Alvina's eyes flick up. "I see it is so. And what will you do once that is done?"

"I thought I would die here. If that's all right with you."

The great cat slides forwards, a boulder of pure muscle beneath a raiment of soot and blood flecked snow. Her teeth spread as thick and as long as fingers. "Here? I heard your crrries. I know what you have done. What makes you think yourself worthy of this garden?"

"If Smough is, then anyone is."

Her whiskers bristle out. "In exchange for his retreat, the Dragonslayer made me swear over the corpse of Sif that I would bury his fat friend here. So, who is the friend that will sponsor a Friend Slayer, a Prophecy Breakerrr—who do you have?"

"No one. But we have that in common now, don't we?"

For a moment, I think the cat is going to tear my throat out. I close my eyes.

"You are an ugly, angrrry thing. But you have some courage to you, no matter whence it comes." I feel cool breath over the stump of my arm; when I open my eyes, the great cat is hunched before me. "And but three legs only, I see, with naught but a single claw left between them. A shadow most welcome to the memory of an old cat." The strange feline eyes crinkle slightly, an ashen tail swishing out behind her once, twice. "You may stay, I think. So long as you keep civil."

"I know jokes, too." Strange. I thought that getting this would grant some sense of vindication. And I thought the sun would make me warm. And I thought it would free me to confess. Mad ideas from a hollowing mind.

I slip the twisted blade through my belt without bothering to stop it from pricking me, then hold out my hand. "Do you want the ring or not?"

Alvina actually purrs. "You may keep it, jolly one, for as long as you remain here. And although I am as lacking in hands as you, there is a task that you and I shall share."

I follow her look. "You're in a hurry to bury the wolf. I didn't know cats were cold blooded."

Her head cocks to the side. "Do the dead not belong out of sight and mind, Solaire Friend-Slayer?"

It takes me a few minutes to stop weeping. Alvina waits with the patience of a cat.

Then we get to work. The moon glares down while I dig in the corpse-dirt with the flat of my hand, and beside me Alvina's form rises on the hill that she sweeps in with her claws. After what seems like hours, a few of the Hunters join us with rusty spades and trowels of whittled wood. Shiva isn't among them. No surprise there.

The clearing's forest of swords disappears behind the earth walls that rise around us. The grave we have to dig is even larger than Smough's, perhaps too much so; I spend ten minutes with a skeletal hand tickling my thigh, and I spend another five trying to shift a bony leg out of our way. It gets darker and harder the further down we go. I always check my finger to make sure the ring's still there.

Then we have to help each other out of the pit. While the silent Forest Hunters hoist each other to the surface, silent Alvina nudges my legs out from under me, draping me over her back and forcing me to grab a handful of fur with my only hand. It's like hugging a bail of hay. Once she's leapt clear, I make sure to get my footing before she can shrug me into the dirt.

I give her an unsteady bow. "Thanks for the ride. Maybe one day I'll manage to get all this hair out of my clothes."

Alvina blinks slowly at me.

It takes a dozen of us to even budge Sif. The great cat takes her place firmly in the middle, head bowed to push, a pink crown slowly spreading over her hair. The corpse is a mountain of red flesh that pushes back against us, and beneath our boots we crack the blades that this legend flattened when he fell. I give it my all. Suddenly, a whole side of the grave itself collapses, sucking our charge in with a crash, half burying it in a dark, wet landslide.

We take a breath. I lean against Alvina's broad shoulder and take some time to catch my breath. The cat is stares down into the mouth of the earth with eyes like shards of moonlight.

Filling the grave is faster than digging it. A few of the Forest Hunters try to set some swords upright again, but the blades are too broken and small. I don't try to help. Instead, I follow Alvina's gaze to the cracked monolith back in the center of the clearing, to the pile of rubble beside it with the glint of Ornstein's spear and Arotrias's sword beneath. One of those might be about right.

I turn to the cat. "You still want my help?"

"If it suits you," she says.

"Well enough. But give me a moment."

I step away to lift my helmet. The deep dents in the steel make it tough to pry it up, and when I do I feel rather than taste the blood dripping into my mouth. I pack a small wad of green blossom into my cheek before jamming the mangled bucket back over my face. It's going to be a long night, so this supply will have to last.

It's hard work, burying the dead.


End file.
